(Note: an earlier article on this topic has been replaced with this one.)

FLASH! Copper bracelets and magnetic wrist straps are useless for relieving pain in people with arthritis, say University of York researchers! In what they claim was the first tightly controlled trial to look at both alternative therapies, they discovered there was no benefit to their use for pain or stiffness. Though this, to me, is equivalent to announcing that the Titanic has struck an iceberg, I congratulate the York researchers on their bravery in confronting and arousing the ire of the millions - literally - all over the globe who wouldn't be caught without their precious - $40 to $100 - ornaments. Though we wish the data pool had been larger - it was 45 patients - at least it was conducted. The York savants tested a copper bracelet, two different magnetic wrist straps, and a demagnetized version.

In the trial, 45 people aged 50 or over who were all diagnosed as suffering from osteoarthritis wore each of the four devices in a random order over a 16-week period. All the devices were ineffective in terms of pain, stiffness and physical function, the researchers reported in the journal Complementary Therapies in Medicine, and the Arthritis Research Campaign charity said people should not waste their money on the therapies. The charity is in the process of compiling a report on the effectiveness of complementary therapies and arthritis, which I await with interest.

Stewart Richmond, a research fellow in the UK Department of Health Sciences, said there had only been one other randomized controlled trial on copper bracelets and that was done in the 1970s. Said he:

It appears that any perceived benefit obtained from wearing a magnetic or copper bracelet can be attributed to psychological placebo effects. People tend to buy them when they are in a lot of pain, then when the pain eases off over time they attribute this to the device. However, our findings suggest that such devices have no real advantage over placebo wrist straps that are not magnetic and do not contain copper.

(The mumbling and teeth-gnashing you hear is the CAM - Complimentary and Alternative Medicine - crowd, preparing scathing rebuttals...)