New Center To Study Alternative Medicine

Are there benefits to therapeutic touch or is it just snake-oil? That is what researchers at the University of Connecticut Health Center in Farmington want to learn at the new Exploratory Center for Frontier Medicine, recently funded by the National Institutes of Health’s Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine for $1.8 million over three years. The Health Center and the University of Arizona, both focusing on touch therapies, are the nation’s only two recipients of center grants to study frontier medicine.

“In spite of the extensive use of complementary and alternative medicine worldwide, and for hundreds, if not thousands of years, we nevertheless know little about its safety and effectiveness, how it works, or its long-term effects,” said Karen Prestwood, MD, assistant clinical professor at the UConn Center on Aging and the new center’s principal investigator.

According to the NIH, there were 250 million more visits to alternative medicine practitioners than there were to primary care physicians in 1997. Energy medicine, homeopathic medicine, electrical or magnetic fields, and distance health and prayer are included in NIH’s “frontier medicine” initiative.

“Our studies will focus on energy medicine – therapeutic touch, healing touch and reiki,” said Dr Prestwood. “They are all commonly used for conditions ranging from headache to cancer, yet our understanding of the human energy field, and how it may be used in healing, is limited. We’re going to apply rigorous scientific standards to the study of energy medicine,” she said.

The research projects include:

*The effect of therapeutic touch on bone metabolism in postmenopausal women after wrist fracture. Principal investigator Dr Prestwood, co-investigators Anne Kenny, MD, assistant professor, Department of Medicine, and Mary Lynn Newport, MD, assistant professor, Department of Orthopedic Surgery;

*The effect of therapeutic touch on bone formation, principal investigator Gloria Gronowicz, PhD, associate professor, Department of Orthopedic Surgery;

*The effect of therapeutic touch on wound healing. Principal investigator Theresa Smith, PhD, assistant professor, Department of Medicine.

The center will also provide new opportunities for research and educational training. Administration of the Exploratory Center in Frontier Medicine will be under the direction of Dr Prestwood, along with a scientific advisory board. They will provide the scientific and educational infrastructure for the UConn Health Center research team as well as for Susan Lutgendorf, MD, at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, whose research will focus on healing touch in advanced cervical cancer and in the immune system.