Acupuncture gained its present foothold in the subconscious of fools shortly after Mao took over China in 1949. The Communist party of China had promised everyone health care, but were in fact unable to deliver proper science-based medicine to the vast population. "Bicycle Doctors" were encouraged to promote herbal and traditional Chinese medical treatments to save money and hide the absence of proper drugs.
Not only did this let a thousand flowers of nonsense bloom and condemn thousands of Brown Bile Bears to inhumane torture, it also convinced gullible Western visitors that the Chinese had some miraculous medical treatments unknown and unexplained by modern science. Pretty much like the gullible Western visitors who went to the Soviet Union shortly after the revolution and declared that they had been to the future and it worked. This research is just another example of flying-saucer-science intended to sucker people into believing that paying out heaps of money for snake-oil is a good idea.
So just to be clear: acupuncture is a cult, a pseudo-science without basis in fact, just like its home companions homeopathy, yoga and Reiki.
I'm not going to provide links since the muppets who reply to say that their great grandmothers survived World War One and Two, smoked liked a chimney, drank like a fish, had unprotected sex with 9 thousand partners, consumed vast quantities of lard, fast food and chips, never ate fruit and attributed their excellent health to homeopathy, acupuncture and Reiki, will do those for you.