Trial reportAcupuncture in medicine : journal of the British Medical Acupuncture Society2021
Acupuncture for chronic pain in adults with sickle cell disease: a mixed-methods pilot study.
Trial report in Acupuncture in medicine : journal of the British Medical Acupuncture Society, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers.
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
14 citing papers in PubMed, 18 citations in OpenAlex.
- Women's Experience of Living with Vulvodynia Pain: Why They Participated in a Randomized Controlled Trial of Acupuncture.Journal of integrative and complementary medicine · 2023Trial
- Pre-implementation Barriers and Facilitators to Integrating Complementary and Integrative Health Interventions into Clinic Workflow: The GRACE Trial, NIH Pragmatic Trials Collaboratory.Pain management nursing : official journal of the American Society of Pain Management Nurses · 2026Article
- Sickle cell pain: call for whole person health approaches to mechanisms-informed integrative management.Blood advances · 2026Article
- Chronic pain in the aging adult with sickle cell disease.Frontiers in pain research (Lausanne, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Emergency care for children with sickle cell disease: a focus on pain and fever.Expert review of hematology · 2025Review
- Managing emotional and physical stress in sickle cell anemia: a review of effective strategies and approaches.Annals of medicine and surgery (2012) · 2025Review
- Barriers and Facilitators to Integrating Acupuncture into the U.S. Health Care System: A Scoping Review.Journal of integrative and complementary medicine · 2024Article
- Collecting patient-reported outcome measures in the electronic health record: Lessons from the NIH pragmatic trials Collaboratory.Contemporary clinical trials · 2024Article
- Acupuncture as a Complementary Treatment for Leg Ulcers in Sickle-Cell Disease.Medical acupuncture · 2024Article
- Developing an Implementation Blueprint for the NIH HEAL Initiative GRACE Trial: Perspectives on Acupuncture and Guided Relaxation for Chronic Sickle Cell Disease Pain.Journal of integrative and complementary medicine · 2023Article
- Hybrid effectiveness-implementation trial of guided relaxation and acupuncture for chronic sickle cell disease pain (GRACE): A protocol.Contemporary clinical trials communications · 2023Article
- Precision, integrative medicine for pain management in sickle cell disease.Frontiers in pain research (Lausanne, Switzerland) · 2023Review
- Differential clinical characteristics across traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) Syndromes in patients with sickle cell disease.Frontiers in pain research (Lausanne, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Enhancing the use of EHR systems for pragmatic embedded research: lessons from the NIH Health Care Systems Research Collaboratory.Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
objectiveChronic pain is a common symptom experienced among patients with sickle cell disease (SCD). Our aims were to assess the feasibility and acceptability of performing acupuncture for the treatment of chronic pain in adults with SCD.
methodsThis was a single-arm, prospective pilot study of six adults with SCD. Participants reported ⩾ 3 months of chronic pain and were > 18 years of age. Per protocol, acupuncture was to be administered twice per week for 5 weeks, for 30 min per session. All treatments were performed in the acupuncture treatment laboratory at the University of Illinois Chicago College of Nursing. Pain intensity, pain interference, and other symptoms were measured at baseline and after the intervention. Participants completed a semi-structured interview and a protocol acceptability questionnaire after the acupuncture intervention.
resultsSix participants (mean age 52.5 years, six Black) were enrolled. Although the study was suspended due to COVID-19 and not all participants completed the 10-session protocol, completion rates were high with no missed appointments. One participant did not complete the study due to hospitalization unrelated to acupuncture. No adverse events were reported. At completion of the intervention at 4-5 weeks post-baseline, all participants had reduced pain intensity and pain interference. The mean acceptability score on the protocol acceptability questionnaire was 82%.
conclusionIt was feasible and acceptable to implement acupuncture in adults with SCD. This study can be used to guide a larger randomized controlled trial to evaluate the effect of acupuncture on reducing chronic pain in adults with SCD.
Indexed as
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What OpenQuestion 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 OpenQuestion graph.