Doctors discover a “gold mine” inside a woman’s knees
When a 65-year-old woman from South Korea sought medical help for painful knees, her physicians did not anticipate discovering gold. Yet that is essentially what appeared before them.
She had also been dealing with unwanted problems involving her stomach.
Osteoarthritis can make everyday life remarkably difficult. As it progresses, the disease slowly erodes the cartilage within a person’s joints, producing swelling, rigidity, and lasting pain. Even the most ordinary routines can become tiring and challenging.
Tasks that used to require little thought—walking a short distance, climbing a staircase, or leaning down to fasten a shoe—may turn slow and painful.
The patient had long struggled with osteoarthritis. She said that anti-inflammatory drugs and pain medication did little to ease her symptoms while also causing unpleasant stomach trouble.
With those remedies failing, she chose acupuncture, according to a medical case described in the New England Journal of Medicine. This alternative practice, used for centuries, places needles at selected points in the body in an effort to reduce pain or address illness.
In this woman’s treatment, the needles were apparently made from gold. Instead of being removed, they had deliberately been left around her knees so they could provide ongoing stimulation.
Keeping needles inside the human body, however, carries genuine dangers. Dr. Ali Guermazi, a Boston University radiology professor who was not connected with the case, explained that retained foreign material may cause inflammation, abscesses, and infections.
The body can treat them as unwanted intruders.
Guermazi also cautioned that embedded needles may interfere with the interpretation of an X-ray by covering portions of the anatomy. He made that observation in 2013.
The body does not necessarily tolerate foreign material. Its response can be categorized as a foreign-body reaction or a persistent inflammatory response. As Guermazi described it, the body attempts to eliminate the object, beginning defensive processes such as inflammation and creating fibrous tissue around it.
There is another potentially serious concern: needles that remain inside a patient can make later medical scans hazardous. Guermazi warned that the woman could not safely undergo an MRI because the needles might shift and injure an artery.
Research supporting acupuncture as a treatment for medical disorders remains limited. Nevertheless, it continues to be widely chosen for painful joints. In some parts of Asia, placing minute lengths of sterile gold thread around an affected joint is a familiar therapy for arthritis.
Acupuncture is also common in the United States. An estimated 3.1 million American adults and 150,000 children received it in 2007, according to the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine at the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
For this patient, the gold scattered throughout her knees offers a striking warning. Alternative medicine may sometimes leave behind far more than a trace—in her case, it created a literal hidden treasure.
