I did acupuncture to relieve my arthritis… but when my pain got worse an X-ray revealed a horrific side effect
A woman undergoing acupuncture to relieve her arthritis pain was shocked to learn hundreds of acupuncture threads had been left in her knees, making her pain worse.
Doctors in South Korea were surprised when an X-ray of the unidentified 65-year-old patient’s knee, intended to assess her arthritis, instead revealed numerous gold threads implanted from a prior acupuncture therapy.
The patient had been diagnosed with osteoarthritis, a painful condition affecting roughly 33 million Americans that causes joints on the ends of bones to wear down, leading bones to rub together.
The woman had a history of treating her pain with conventional medicine, but increasingly opted for alternative treatments like gold thread acupuncture. She eventually went to the hospital complaining of severe pain in her knee.
Gold thread acupuncture is a popular holistic treatment in some Asian countries and involves inserting sterile gold threads of about three to five millimeters in length into acupuncture points to relieve pain and provide continuous stimulation even after the acupuncture session is over.
Scans of the woman’s knee showed signs consistent with osteoarthritis, as well as specks that center around her kneecaps and spread beyond to reach her shin bone and upper thigh.
The doctors who treated the woman did not mention in their report whether they removed the threads, but not doing so can be risky as they can migrate to elsewhere in the body, damaging surrounding tissues and causing severe infections.
The patient, who had osteoarthritis, had previously treated her joint pain with both standard medications and alternative therapies like acupuncture (stock)
Doctors treating the patient, whose case was detailed in the New England Journal of Medicine, cautioned that gold thread acupuncture can complicate a doctor’s ability to diagnose their patients because the specks obscure some of the patient’s anatomy on scans.
Acupuncture is a traditional Chinese medicine that involves inserting tiny, sterile needles into specific ‘acupoints’ around the body. It is commonly used to treat pain, reduce stress and promote an overall sense of well-being and balance.
It works by stimulating specific points to correct imbalances in the body’s vital energy, known as Qi (pronounced ‘chee’). The needles are believed to unblock or redirect this energy along pathways called meridians.
In gold thread acupuncture, the practitioner inserts very fine, sterile gold threads into specific acupoints or problem areas. These threads, which can be just a few millimeters long, remain under the skin indefinitely.
Gold thread acupuncture has been used for decades to treat bone and joint pain and headaches, primarily in China and Korea.
Though practitioners claim that the inserted threads act as a constant stimulant to the central nervous system, triggering the release of pain-relieving chemicals like endorphins and promoting natural healing, there is no scientific evidence to support this.
Medical experts advise against using this as a treatment. Introducing a foreign object into the body can cause infection and the threads can potentially migrate to other parts of the body.
The threads can be removed, but because they are under the skin, removal requires a small incision at the insertion point. Attempting to remove them at home can lead to infection, scarring or leaving fragments behind.
The 65-year-old woman’s X-rays revealed hundreds of tiny specks that doctors learned were gold threads inserted as part of a traditional acupuncture practice
The 65-year-old woman’s case is not unique.
Doctors have reported in several case studies similar instances of people treating their arthritis or headache with gold thread acupuncture with gruesome side effects.
In 2021, doctors in Korea treated a woman who presented to the hospital with a severely swollen right lower leg with multiple cysts on the skin. She told doctors she had had gold thread acupuncture on her back a decade earlier, but not on her legs.
During the preceding year, the woman had experienced periodic skin infections on her right leg, even plucking out gold threads that poked through her skin at various points.
Doctors said: ‘We assume that the implanted particles on the back have migrated through the vessels to the legs. Since these particles are not self-absorbable, they remain in the tissue for years and cause secondary infections recurrently.’
In 2021, Korean doctors wrote in the Indian Journal of Dermatology, Venereology and Leprology about a 50-year-old woman who developed a skin reaction after gold thread acupuncture for cosmetic purposes.
Six months after the procedure, she developed firm, red painless bumps on her forehead and cheeks.
Imaging confirmed the presence of many gold threads in her facial tissue and a biopsy revealed a chronic inflammatory reaction called a foreign body granuloma.
Doctors in Korea reported a 2021 case where a woman’s chronically infected leg was caused by gold threads that had migrated from her back. They explained that the non-absorbable threads, implanted a decade earlier during acupuncture, had permanently settled in her leg tissue, acting as a persistent source of recurrent infection
In 2022, a 73-year-old Korean man was hospitalized for a stroke. During his evaluation, he described a 30-year history of widespread joint pain he had self-treated with gold thread acupuncture. X-rays revealed thousands of the embedded threads throughout his body
Once a granuloma forms, treatment is challenging and often incomplete, as completely removing numerous, deeply embedded threads is difficult.
Gold can resist corrosion, tarnishing and rusting due to its molecular structure that makes it unlikely to break down or change when it comes in contact with oxygen, acids or other substances.
But it can still degrade in the body over time, releasing compounds that the immune system recognizes as foreign.
The immune system’s response to what it perceives as foreign invaders sets off a cascade of inflammatory processes in the body.
While the 50-year-old woman’s condition improved slightly when doctors removed some threads and gave her steroid injections, many of the threads remained embedded and the spots on her face remained for six more months.
Holistic pain therapies like this one, done in place of doctor check-ups, can potentially obscure a real medical problem, like rheumatoid arthritis, a chronic disease in which the body’s own immune system attacks healthy joint tissues.
In another case, a 73-year-old man in Korea was hospitalized with a severe stroke in 2022 after undergoing gold thread acupuncture for years.
He complained of dizziness and pain upon arrival to the hospital.
Partway through his exam, the man mentioned that he had pain across his lower back, knees, wrists and fingers, which he had been experiencing for about 30 years.
The man had never been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. Rather than seeing a doctor, he had been treating his pain for many years without success with gold thread acupuncture.
When doctors took X-rays, they found thousands of tiny threads embedded in tissues all over his body.
His symptoms finally improved only after he received proper medication for his newly diagnosed RA.
