Acupuncture for Neck Pain

Current research provides encouraging evidence that acupuncture may help reduce neck pain and associated physical limitations, particularly in the short term.

1. A 2025 systematic review and meta-analysis examined 26 randomised controlled trials involving 3,520 adults with neck pain. Compared with inactive treatments, acupuncture was associated with reductions in pain intensity, pain-related disability and pain sensitivity. Improvements in quality of life were also reported. However, the quality of the evidence ranged from very low to moderate, and only half of the included trials had a low risk of bias.

1. A 2016 Cochrane review assessed 27 randomised trials involving several neck conditions, including chronic non-specific neck pain, mechanical neck pain, myofascial pain and neck pain associated with cervical degeneration. The review found moderate-quality evidence that acupuncture provided greater pain relief than sham acupuncture immediately after treatment and during short-term follow-up. Short-term improvements in neck-related disability were also reported, although longer-term benefits remained uncertain.

1. A 2021 multicentre randomised controlled trial studied 896 people with neck pain related to cervical spondylosis. Participants received optimised acupuncture, shallow acupuncture or sham acupuncture. After four weeks, the optimised acupuncture group reported greater improvements in neck pain-related disability than either comparison group. These differences were still present at the 16-week follow-up, although the size of the effect varied between the nine participating centres.