Presentation summary

Laser acupuncture (LA) is identified as a separate treatment from other low level laser therapy, and whichcould act by different pathways. The value of sham laser as a control in trials of LLLT to determine if there is asspecific benefit of laser is emphasized.

The focus of my research was on chronic non-specific low back pain(CNLBP) which is a common condition with a high economic burden. In 2008 when I commenced my project,there was little research evidence from trials treating this condition by LA.

I conducted two separate double-blind sham controlled trials examining LA for treatment of CNLBP over arange of low laser doses stimulating acupuncture points. Subsequent to this an updated systematic review andmeta-analysis was performed to determine if laser therapy including laser acupuncture had a laser specificbenefit for pain reduction in CNLBP. A further update has been done on this research for this presentation.

In both LA trials (1) there was a significant and clinically important non-specific reduction in pain lasting overfollow-up of 6 and 12 months however there was no difference between sham and the laser groups in primaryor other outcomes.

The systematic review (2) demonstrated that in the immediate and short-term follow-up there was moderate quality evidence for significant and clinically important pain reduction in favour of lasertreatment, but occurring in trials using at least 3 J/point, with baseline 3 pain less than 30 months and in non-acupuncture laser therapy trials.

The review considered 15 laser trials in the time span until Aug 2014,including 5 LA trials which were all negative. Since then 5 more similar papers on LA have been published ; 3were sham controlled[3-5] and most were positive for a specific laser effect.

Although there is now more evidence for a specific benefit LA in CNLBP, further research is required in trialsusing higher laser dose and on explaining laser effect on local or distal acupoints.