A woman seeking relief from arthritis through acupuncture was astounded to discover that hundreds of acupuncture threads had been left in her knees, exacerbating her pain.

In South Korea, doctors were taken aback when an X-ray intended to evaluate a 65-year-old woman’s arthritis unexpectedly revealed a multitude of gold threads implanted from a previous acupuncture session.

The patient, who remains unnamed, was suffering from osteoarthritis, a debilitating condition affecting around 33 million people in the United States. This ailment causes the cartilage in joints to deteriorate, resulting in painful bone-on-bone friction.

Though she initially managed her discomfort with conventional medicine, the woman increasingly turned to alternative therapies, including gold thread acupuncture. Her hospital visit was prompted by intense knee pain.

Gold thread acupuncture, prevalent in some Asian countries, is a holistic approach that involves inserting small, sterile gold threads, typically three to five millimeters long, into acupuncture points. These threads aim to alleviate pain by providing continuous stimulation even after the session concludes.

Medical scans of the woman’s knee not only indicated typical signs of osteoarthritis but also revealed a scattering of specks centered around her kneecaps, extending down to her shin bone and up to her 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.