Is Skin-Touch Sham Needle Not Placebo? A Double-Blind Crossover Study on Pain Alleviation

Figure 3

Changes in pain intensity rated by the 23 subjects before, during, and after application of the skin-touch placebo needles (red), no-touch placebo needles (yellow) and during the no-treatment control (white). The broken line (a score of 100) indicates baseline pain intensity measured at 20 min before needle application. The top, middle, and bottom lines of the boxes correspond to the 75th, 50th (median), and 25th percentiles, respectively. The whiskers extend from the 10th to the 90th percentile. The filled circles indicate the arithmetic mean.