The TAO congress was held on 25th-27th September 2025 in the beautiful city of Graz in Austria and hosted by Dr Olivia Pjoer and Dr Matthias Huemer, both medical doctors and acupuncturists in Austria. The theme of this acupuncture and Chinese medicine conference was neurology, gastroenterology and hormones and featured exciting and clinically relevant updates on acupuncture and Chinese herbal research. The top 3 Acupuncture publications of the year were presented by Dr Matthias Huemer including an RCT on Acupuncture for sciatica published in JAMA, an RCT on acupuncture for irritable bowel syndrome, and finally an Italian study on using acupuncture to support spontaneous labour prior to planned induction.
This was followed by Sandro Graca who provided a practical summary of recent acupuncture research for fertility – fantastic for those of us working in the reproductive medicine field! SaTA member Dr Lily Lai presented on her PCOS research and how this has evolved her approach to treatment in the clinic. Poster prizes were awarded by the OGKA (the Austrian Society for Controlled Acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine) and Evidence Based Acupuncture (EBA) to two extremely deserving projects – the 1st prize to Chantal Blaser from Zurich who presented her quantitative analysis of the most frequently used acupuncture points by TCM practitioners in Switzerland. The 2nd prize was awarded to Joan Boccino from New York who presented her work on her acupuncture outreach project in Guatemala exploring the use of auricular acupuncture for diabetes and other common conditions. Well done to both prize winners and good luck for your future research projects! For more information about next year’s TAO Kongress on sports medicine, fertility and longevity visit their website: https://www.tcmkongress.at/en/Home.
For more information:
JAMA RCT on acupuncture and sciatica
RCT on Acupuncture before planned induction of labourht
