Comparing the effects of individualized, standard, sham and no acupuncture in the treatment of knee osteoarthritis: a multicenter randomized controlled trial
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Acupuncture is an effective yet complex therapy, integrating syndrome differentiation, selection of appropriate acupoints and skillful needling techniques. Clinicians carefully tailor acupuncture treatment to each patient. However, most clinical trials of acupuncture have been based on a standardized formula of points for every patient without properly accounting for individualdifferences and, as a result, have not been reflective of the true efficacy of clinical practice. To determine the efficacy of meridian-based syndrome differentiation and Sa-am acupuncture, we have designed a simple pragmatic trial providing individualized treatments while working within a general framework. METHODS/DESIGN: The study is designed to be a parallel, patient- and assessor-blind, randomized controlled trial (RCT). A total of250 patients with knee osteoarthritis (OA) will be recruited from two independent hospitals, Semyung University Oriental Medicine Hospital in Chung-ju and Dongguk University Oriental Hospital in Ilsan, South Korea. Patients will be randomly allocated into four treatment groups: 1. individualized, meridian-based syndrome differentiation and Sa-am acupuncture treatment;2. standard acupuncture treatment;3. sham acupuncture treatment; and 4. no acupuncture treatment. Patients in groups 1 to 3 will be treated by certified oriental medicine doctors twice a week for 6 weeks. The primary outcome measure will be the self-reported total Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Osteoarthritis Index (WOMAC) score change. The trial will also include secondary outcome measures. DISCUSSION: This trial is designed to determine the efficacy of individualized acupuncture treatment in patients with knee OA by comparing the differences between individualized, standard, sham and no acupuncture treatments. The results of this trial may validate the efficacy of individualized acupuncture therapy, encouraging its widespread use. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT01569230.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.010 | 0.011 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.008 | 0.005 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.005 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.008 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".