Studies by Dr. Peter Dorsher, a pain expert at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Fla., indicate the acupuncture points of acupuncture are anatomically and clinically similar to the trigger points used in myofascial therapy and he recommends either therapy to help those seeking relief from musculoskeletal pain.

Dorsher finds at least 92 percent of common trigger points anatomically correspond with acupoints and that their clinical correspondence in treating pain was more than 95 percent.

"This may come as a surprise to those who perform the two different techniques, because the notion has been that these are exclusive therapies separated by thousands of years," Dorsher says in a statement. However his studies show that in the treatment of pain disorders, acupuncture and myofascial techniques are fundamentally similar.

Classic Chinese acupuncture treats pain and other health disorders by "resetting" nerve transmissions by means of inserting needles in one or several of 361 acupoints.

Myofascial trigger-point therapy -- evolving since the mid-1800s -- seeks to relieve pain through deep pressure or some other technique applied to 255 "trigger points."

The findings are published in the in the Journal of Complementary and Alternative Medicine.