Pursuing the Evidence: the CACTUS study
Research Project at the Kite Clinic, London, UK
12/13/2007 – by Bruce McCallum: In 2005, the King’s Fund offered funding for research into the integration of complementary therapies and primary health. After almost two years of investigation and preparation, the Kite Clinic, in association with the Institute of Health & Social Care Research at the Peninsula Medical School, secured substantial funding for a long term study into the effects of Five Element Acupuncture in a primary care setting.
The project steering group includes highly qualified experts in their relevant fields and includes researchers, statisticians, a GP, acupuncturists and patients. This ensures that the research remains relevant to the people that will be delivering and receiving acupuncture treatment.
The CACTUS project is based on a pragmatic design model that ensures that the acupuncture treatment given to trial patients is clinically relevant and that the standard of research is scientifically acceptable.
Of primary consideration in this project are ethical considerations and the care of all patients involved. To this end, no placebo treatments will be given and ALL patients involved (including those in the control group) will receive acupuncture treatment over a period of 6 months. The trial is set to take almost two years to complete and is due to start in early 2008 when we will begin recruiting patients from 4 GP practices in London.
We aim to involve 120 patients in the trial and collect substantial quantitative and qualitative data from both the treatment and control groups. The trial results and conclusions will be available in late 2009.
Bruce McCallum, London, UK. November 2007
The CACTUS (Classical ACupuncture Treatment for people with Unexplained Symptoms) study will be investigating the effects of Five-Element Acupuncture on that group of patients who present frequently at their GP clinics with persistent physical symptoms that cannot be explained by current western medical knowledge.
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