The Analgesic Efficacy of Bee Venom Acupuncture for Knee Osteoarthritis: A Comparative Study with Needle Acupuncture

Abstract

The aim of this investigation was to determine whether bee venom (BV) administered directly into an acupoint was a clinically effective and safe method for relieving the pain of patients with knee osteoarthritis (OA) as compared to traditional needle acupuncture. We evaluated the efficacy of BV acupuncture using both pain relief scores and computerized infrared thermography (IRT) following 4 weeks of BV acupuncture treatment. We observed that a significantly higher proportion of subjects receiving BV acupuncture reported substantial pain relief as compared with those receiving traditional needle acupuncture therapy. Furthermore, the IRT score was significantly improved and paralleled the level of pain relief.

Long-Term Effectiveness of Bee Venom Acupuncture and Physiotherapy in the Treatment of Adhesive Capsulitis: A One-Year Follow-Up Analysis of a Previous Randomized Controlled Trial

“…The injection volumes were based on the previous study. 10 The acupuncture points selected were LI15 (between the greater tubercle of the humerus and the anterior end of the lateral border of the acromion), LI16 (between the spine of the scapula and the acromial end of the clavicle), TE14 (between the greater tubercle of the humerus and the acromial angle), GB21 (midpoint of the line connecting the lateral end of the acromion with the spinous process of the seventh cervical vertebra (C7)), SI11 (between the upper third and lower two thirds of the line connecting the midpoint of the spine of the scapula with the inferior angle of the scapula), and 5 additional points around the shoulder. 11 All participants in the three groups were given PT, which was performed at each visit by a single physical therapist with over 7 years of clinical experience.…”

A review of thermography as promising non-invasive detection modality for breast tumor

“…It is a relatively straightforward imaging approach that detects the variation of temperature on the human skin surface. Thermography is widely used in the medical arena [5,7,9,12,14,16,17,21,32,35,[47][48][49][50][51][52][55][56][57][58][59]63,68,70,71,73,76,80,85]. These include the detection of breast cancer, which is the refocus of many biomedical researches in recent years [1].…”

Prolonged analgesic effect of PLGA-encapsulated bee venom on formalin-induced pain in rats

“…In Korean traditional medicine, BV acupuncture is considered a useful therapeutic method for treating chronic diseases accompanied by severe pain and inflammation (Kwon et al, 2001b). In the BV acupuncture treatment, BV injection is conducted to stimulate an acupuncture point as well as to exert pharmacological effects by the biologically active compounds in BV (Kwon et al, 2001a).…”