Trial reportJournal of pain research2025
Clinical Efficacy of Electroacupuncture in the Treatment of Chronic Neck Pain: A Randomized Clinical Trial.
Trial report in Journal of pain research, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Visual analysis of research hotspots and trends of external therapies in traditional Chinese medicine for chronic pain.Frontiers in medicine · 2025Pooled it
- Protocol for the real-world evidence of acupuncture for chronic neck pain in the elderly: an observational multi-centre cohort study.Frontiers in medicine · 2026Article
- The Analgesic Effect of NLRP3 Inflammasome in the Relief of Inflammatory Pain by Electroacupuncture: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Animal Studies.Journal of pain research · 2025Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Purpose: Chronic neck pain (CNP) is a common but challenging symptom in clinical practice. Acupuncture is widely used in alleviating the symptoms of CNP. The main objective of this study was to evaluate the efficacy and safety of electroacupuncture (EA) in patients with CNP and to quantify the specific effects of EA by controlling for placebo effects. Patients and Methods: A randomized sham-controlled trial was conducted at the outpatient departments of single hospital in China from November 2019 to November 2020 and a total of 105 participants with CNP were enrolled. Participants were randomly assigned (1:1:1) to the EA group, sham electroacupuncture (SEA) group and waiting list (WL) group. The primary outcome was change in the Northwick Park Neck Pain Questionnaire (NPQ). Secondary outcomes included McGill Pain Questionnaire (MG), visual analogue scale (VAS) and pain threshold (PT). Results: This randomized clinical trial included 98 patients. The EA group demonstrated a greater reduction in NPQ scores compared to the SEA group after 10 sessions (-7.2564, 95% CI=-12.2875 to -2.2253, Conclusion: This randomized clinical trial found that, in patients with CNP, EA significantly improved the symptoms compared with SEA and WL groups both immediately and cumulatively (at 5 weeks), and these benefits persisted through week 17. These comparisons demonstrated that EA's clinical benefits exceeded placebo effects.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What Socratic holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.