Shen and her colleagues found that those women who had received electroacupuncture had fewer vomiting episodes than the women who only received drugs. Even the women who got the "minimal needling" did somewhat better than the women who only got drugs, she reports. That suggests that some of the response to acupuncture could be explained by the "placebo effect" -- the concept that some patients will get better even without getting the real treatment, perhaps just from receiving more attention from caregivers. However, the acupuncture and the minimal needling was terminated at five days, and when Shen and colleagues went back to look at how the patients were faring on the ninth day, there were no longer significant differences between the three groups.
That's important, Shen says, because it supports the idea that acupuncture really had an effect on the body. "We were skeptical at the beginning, thinking that maybe it was just the extra attention, so that's why we did the follow-up," Shen tells WebMD. "It's the strongest part of our study."
