Doctors reviewing the X-rays of a 65-year-old woman from South Korea who suffered from severe knee pain were stunned by what they found: her knees were filled with hundreds of tiny gold acupuncture needles embedded deep within the tissue. The woman had been battling osteoarthritis, a degenerative joint disease that wears away cartilage and bone, leading to stiffness, swelling, and chronic pain.
Conventional treatments such as painkillers and anti-inflammatory drugs brought her little relief, and in her case, they also caused serious stomach issues. In search of another option, she turned to acupuncture, a traditional therapy where thin needles are inserted at specific points in the body to alleviate pain. According to a report in the New England Journal of Medicine, the gold needles in her case were deliberately left inside her knees, likely as part of a method intended to provide continuous stimulation and long-term relief.
In some parts of Asia, it is not uncommon for practitioners to leave gold threads or needles around joints as a treatment for arthritis. However, experts caution that this practice can be dangerous. Dr. Ali Guermazi, a radiology professor at Boston University, explained that leaving foreign objects inside the body may cause inflammation, abscesses, or even infection. Another problem is that the needles can interfere with imaging:
“The needles may obscure some of the anatomy,” Guermazi said.
There are also safety concerns with medical scans. Patients who have embedded needles in their joints are unable to undergo MRI examinations, since the magnetic pull could shift the metal and potentially damage blood vessels or surrounding tissue.
“The human body naturally tries to expel foreign objects,” Guermazi noted. “It walls them off with fibrous tissue to protect itself.”
Although scientific evidence for acupuncture’s effectiveness remains limited, it continues to be widely used around the world. In fact, a U.S. survey from 2007 estimated that 3.1 million adults and 150,000 children had undergone acupuncture treatments.