The Relationship between Patients’Expectations of Treatment Effect and Clinical Outcome in a Trial of Acupuncture for Hypertension※

Objectives :To identify potential correlation between patients’ expectations and clinical outcome in a randomized control study of acupuncture. Methods : In a clinical trial of acupuncture for hypertension, 60 participants with pre and mild hypertension were randomized into an acupuncture group and a control group. After randomization, all participants were asked to rate their expectation for the intervention on a scale of 0 to 10. To analyze the effect of expectation on clinical outcome, change of blood pressure was compared between high and low expectation groups. Results : There was no significant difference of baseline blood pressure between low expectation group and high expectation group. Proportion of acupuncture group and control group was also not different between low and high expectation groups (p = 0.638). The change of systolic blood pressure was -1.55 mmHg in low expectation group and -3.07 mmHg in high expectation group, and it was not significantly different (p = 0.54). There was no significant difference in the change of diastolic blood pressure between two groups (p = 0.58), with -3.24 mmHg in low expectation group and -2.34 mmHg in high expectation group. Conclusion : In this study, the expectation of intervention (including acupuncture treatment) was not associated with the effect of intervention.