Auriculotherapy Treatment Protocol for Low-Back Pain: A Randomized Trial
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: The author developed an auriculotherapy treatment protocol to produce efficient pain relief in people with low-back pain. This treatment protocol is based on brain plasticity and integration of postural control information that can be modulated by auriculotherapy. This treatment has been developed and taught in the United States, Europe, Canada, and South America for many years. Objective: The aim of this study was to compare the efficacy of verum auriculotherapy versus placebo treatment on patients with low-back pain. Methods: To demonstrate the efficacy of this protocol, the author tested it, treating a maximum of five specific auriculotherapy points that stimulated in each ear pavilion. Stimulation was produced by an electrical current. The trial included 12 male patients who had low-back pain, who were divided into two groups of 6 patients each. The effects on group 1 (treatment of points that did not correspond with affected areas; i.e., placebo) and group 2 (treatment of points corresponding with painful areas; i.e., verum treatment). Results: Group 2 (verum treatment) experienced a rapid and significant attenuation of pain in several minutes (a visual analogue score [VAS] average decrease of pain: −4.3; p-value<0.002) and an immediate increase of lumbar flexibility as evaluated by the Schöber test (an average increase of lumbar flexibility of 2 cm, p-value 0.003). There was no effect on group 1 (placebo), which had an average score of −0.6 on the VAS with a p-value>0.28 and an 0.1-cm of lumbar flexibility increase, with a p-value>0.74 during the placebo treatment. Conclusions: The length of pain relied varied among patients in group 2 and was not dependent on the purported cause of the postural syndrome. This effect could last for hours, weeks, months or longer. This auriculotherapy protocol is effective for decreasing pain and increasing lumbar flexibility in patients who have low-back pain.
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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 | 0.006 | 0.007 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.006 | 0.003 |
| 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 | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.021 | 0.002 |
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".