Funding of acupuncture research by the National Institutes of Health: a brief history

Past and present funding of acupuncture research by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is reviewed. Key events are noted that have impacted this funding, including the post-Cultural Revolution opening of China to the West and the discovery in Hong Kong of ear acupoints to treat substance abusers, both in the early 1970s; the creation of the NIH Office of Alternative Medicine (OAM) in 1992; the reclassifying of the acupuncture needle from a class III (investigational) to a class II (safe and effective) medical device by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1996; the NIH Consensus Development Conference on Acupuncture in 1997; and the congressionally-mandated upgrade of OAM to the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) in 1999. A search of the CRISP database of NIH-funded research projects (from 1972 to 1999) for the topic `ACUPUNCTURE' produced 182 hits representing 79 separate projects. The distribution by year of these 79 grants, 35 prior to 1980, 38 post-1992, is seen as reflecting the influence of the above events. Among the 42 pilot projects initially funded by OAM, six were trials of acupuncture and an additional five were trials of other modalities of Oriental Medicine. Of the nine currently funded academically-based NCCAM Centers, seven include clinical trials of acupuncture, Chinese herbs or Qigong in their research plans. The OAM-initiated 1998 request for clinical trial pilot studies to develop improved methodology for acupuncture research resulted in seven funded projects. In fiscal year 1999, OAM/NCCAM funded a major trial of acupuncture for osteoarthritis, and a new group of Center grants was awarded.