The use of fixed magnets in attempts to relieve pain and muscular dysfunction has been popular among quack practitioners, and various magnetic devices have been advertised to a gullible public. Of course, this idea has to be separated from that of using electromagnetic fields of varying frequencies, which certainly exert some effect upon tissues.
A pilot study to determine whether treatment with permanent magnets is capable of easing discomfort in musculoskeletal disorders, including low back pain, has been reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association for March 8. Low back pain is a disabling and costly affliction from which it is estimated that 85 per cent of people suffer at some time during their lives. There is currently reported to be a media campaign in the United States to promote the use of permanent magnets for relief.
In a randomised double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover trial carried out with outpatients attending a Veterans Affairs hospital in Arizona, 19 men and one woman with stable low back pain which had lasted a mean duration of 19 years were treated by application of bipolar permanent magnets on alternate weeks for six hours daily, three days a week. On the alternate weeks a sham device was applied. Intensity of pain was measured by the visual analogue scale. No immediate or cumulative difference in the intensity of the low back pain could be observed during application of the magnetic device.
The results neither prove nor disprove the effectiveness of magnetic therapy, and further studies would be necessary before drawing any conclusion. Different types of magnets, unipolar and bipolar, and magnets of greater strength would have to be tried, and treatment time increased. It is possible that the lack of benefit in this trial is explicable by the greater depth in the tissues of the source of pain in the participants.