Meet the woman with the golden touch . consider it or not , the short squiggly shining - white lines on this X - ray show flecks of amber that have become embedded in her script .
The story behind this image is excuse in a medical shell study published inThe New England Journal of Medicine(NEJM ) this week .
The 58 - twelvemonth - old South Korean womanhood visited the hospital woe from continuing joint pain and queer deformities in her hands and feet , an ill she had been put up from for around 40 age . At age 18 , she begin to treat her condition using a traditional Asian proficiency called “ golden train of thought stylostixis ” , involving the insertion of small pieces of sterile gold thread with an acupuncture needle ( you may probably see where this write up is going now ) .
you may also see in the ex - irradiation how her hand have become deformed due torheumatoid arthritis . This is stimulate by instigative cells of the immune system gathering around the join , finally hardening into a baffling fibrous tissue . This tissue , known as pannus , slowly releases substances that can speed up the impairment to the bone , gristle , and ligaments .
There ’s not much in the path of scientific evidence that gold string stylostixis can facilitate you with this consideration . Nevertheless , this handling has a long history of treating joint pain that go forward to this day . Oral and injectable amber treatments are also sometimes used .
“ In East Asia and globally , acupuncture – let in gilded thread acupuncture – has long been used to treat joint pain in the ass . unwritten and injectable gold preparation are also sometimes used , ” Dr Young - Bin Joo and Dr Kyung - Su Park , the doctors who treat the woman , explain in theircase study .
After doctors officially diagnosed the 58 - twelvemonth older with rheumatoid arthritis , she was care for with the more established combining of methotrexate and leflunomide , two drugs that help reduce the physical structure ’s resistant system thereby dampening swelling around the joints .
The golden splinters remain in her hands .
Doctors have come up across cases like this before , especially in East Asia where the exercise is more common than elsewhere . In 2013 , the NEJM report another case report of a 65 - year - old woman in South Korea who hadtiny aureate splinter within her kneeafter class of gold screw thread stylostixis treatment for her osteoarthritis .
