X-Ray Reveals Hundreds of Gold Needles in Woman’s Knees

When doctors looked at an X-ray of an elderly woman’s knees, they were shocked to see hundreds of tiny gold acupuncture needles still inside her tissue.

The woman, 65 years old and from South Korea, had been diagnosed with osteoarthritis, a disease where the cartilage and bones in the joints wear down, causing stiffness and pain.

Since painkillers and anti-inflammatory drugs didn’t ease her symptoms and only caused stomach problems, she turned to acupuncture, according to a report published last week in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Acupuncture is an alternative therapy where thin needles are placed in specific spots on the body, with the goal of reducing pain or treating health issues.

In this case, the woman’s acupuncturist used gold needles and left them inside her tissue on purpose, hoping for ongoing stimulation, the report explained.

But keeping needles or any foreign object in the body can be risky, said Dr. Ali Guermazi, a radiology professor at Boston University who was not involved in the case.

Objects left in the body may trigger inflammation, infection, or abscesses.

They can also interfere with medical scans.

“The needles may block parts of the anatomy on an X-ray,” Guermazi said.

“The body tries to reject foreign objects. It reacts with defense mechanisms like inflammation and by forming fibrous tissue around them,” he added.

Needles inside the body can create other problems as well.

“For example, a patient can’t safely go through an MRI. The magnetic pull might move the needles and even damage an artery,” Guermazi warned.

There is little solid scientific proof that acupuncture truly helps medical conditions.

Still, it remains popular for joint pain, and in many Asian countries, inserting gold threads around painful joints is a common treatment for arthritis, according to the report.

In the United States, about 3.1 million adults and 150,000 children received acupuncture in 2007, according to a survey by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine at the U.S. National Institutes of Health.