Glucopuncture: A novel injection therapy for non-specific low back pain

Abstract

Non-specific low back pain can seriously decrease the health-related quality of life. In the search for treatment modalities which are inexpensive and effective, isotonic sugar water injections have received more attention among clinicians worldwide. Physicians have been injecting sugar water epidurally, perineurally and into soft tissues such as muscles and ligaments. In this article, it is hypothesized that isotonic sugar water injections can be a new tool to manage patients with non-specific low back pain originating from muscles and ligaments. Especially shallow injections into muscles and ligaments are interesting for some physicians as these techniques do not require radiological guidance.

Ultrasound-guided Gluco-puncture in the management of saphenous nerve entrapment in ultra-trail runner: A clinical case

“…In US and Asia, dextrose (d-glucose) is more common, while in Europe, glucose is applied. Glucopuncture is a nonsteroidal injection therapy for the management of a variety of nonrheumatic musculoskeletal conditions [33,34,35,36,37]. Especially in the last decade, several clinical studies have confirmed the excellent safety -efficacy ratio of S5W injections [38,39,40,41,42].…”

“…Steroids are never added to the injectate because these might undermine tissue repair [49,50,51,52,53]. As the total dose of sugar is small, these injections can be applied for patients with diabetes [54]. In addition, most of the sugar water is metabolized at the injection site and does not even enter blood flow.…”