and pain was eased by two-thirds. Increasing levels of adenosine without acupuncture also had a soothing effect, the journal Nature Neuroscience reports. But the finding does not explain the rationale for other, non-pain related uses of the technique. For instance, some use acupuncture to help them quit smoking, others to boost their odds of becoming pregnant through IVF. The researchers said that adenosine had many roles in the body and they cannot rule out its involvement in addiction or fertility. They do not, however, believe the traditional explanation for acupuncture, that applied at specific points on the body, the needles rebalance the body's 'vital forces'. They said: 'It should be noted that while this work suggests a mechanism for local pain relief by acupuncture, it does not in any way endorse the ancient mystical idea that needles work by correcting some aberrant "Qi" energy flow.' Despite the research being published in one of the prestigious Nature journals, British sceptics remain unconvinced. Professor Edzard Ernst, of Exeter University, questioned whether the American researchers were thorough enough and said the results on animals would not necessarily be replicated in humans. Comments ( 17 ) In my opinion this result in mice is due to the well established (but ignored by many) "counter irritant effect". For instance, if you inject an irritant into the footpads of rodents and then another irritant into the peritoneal cavity the inflammatory response in the footpad is reduced. Sticking pins in the mice is just an irritant which