Acupuncture does not appear to help people who are recovering from a stroke, the results of a new study indicate.

Some people use acupuncture alongside traditional stroke rehabilitation to aid their recovery, however until now, its effectiveness has been uncertain.

In one of the most comprehensive studies ever carried out in this area, UK and South Korean researchers carried out a major review of 10 studies involving 711 patients who had suffered a stroke.

They found that the majority of existing studies failed to find acupuncture effective in the aftermath of a stroke.
In fact, they found that only two studies showed a positive effect, however both were highly biased and poorly reported, making them less reliable than the other studies.

"The evidence from rigorous studies testing the effectiveness of acupuncture during stroke rehabilitation is negative," the team concluded.

Details of these findings are published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. However in a related commentary, Dr Hongmei Wu of West China Hospital, in Chengdu, China, urged people to interpret these results ‘cautiously' and called for large, well-designed trials to better understand the effects of acupuncture and stroke recovery.