Objective: Acupuncture overviews are increasing rapidly; however, their reporting quality is yet unclear. We aimed to investigate the reporting quality of relevant overviews according to the preferred reporting items for overviews of reviews (PRIOR) statement. Methods: We systematically searched PubMed from inception to August 16, 2022 for overviews on acupuncture therapies. Reporting quality of included overviews was evaluated using the PRIOR statement, and the results were cross-checked. Multiple linear regression analysis was used to assess the predictors of the reporting completeness. GraphPad 9.4 was utilized to generate an evidence map, Excel 2019 was used to extract and manage data, and R 4.2.3 was used for data analysis. Results: A total of 49 overviews published from 2006 to 2022 were included, of which China ranked first with 38 overviews. The most frequently searched database was PubMed/ Medline (n = 48, 98%), and commonly used methodological quality assessment tool was AMSTAR-2 (n = 14, 29%). The overarching themes centered on acupuncture for obstetrics, gynecology, reproductive diseases, as well as depression, anxiety, and insomnia. Reporting quality needs to be improved involving the definition of systematic reviews (SRs), overlap of primary studies and SRs, methods for managing discrepant data across SRs, risk of bias in primary studies, heterogeneity, and sensitivity analysis of synthesized results, reporting bias assessment, and registration and protocol. Moreover, publication in recent years and receiving funding support were significantly associated with higher overall reporting quality score (P < 0.05). Conclusion: Based on the PRIOR statement, this methodological study indicates that the reporting quality of the included acupuncture overviews is poor. In the future, authors of overviews are encouraged to use the PRIOR statement for standardized reporting. Furthermore, it is recommended that journal editors mandate the inclusion of this statement in authors' reports and require a complete PRIOR checklist.

Postoperative gastrointestinal disorder (POGD) was a common complication after surgery under anesthesia. Strategies in combination with Traditional Chinese Medicine and Western medicine showed some distinct effects but standardized clinical practice guidelines were not available. Thus, a multidisciplinary expert team from various professional bodies including the Perioperative and Anesthesia Professional Committees of the Chinese Association of Integrative Medicine (CAIM), jointly with Gansu Province Clinical Research Center of Integrative Anesthesiology/Anesthesia and Pain Medical Center of Gansu Provincial Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine and WHO Collaborating Center for Guideline Implementation and Knowledge Translation/Chinese Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development, and Evaluation (GRADE) Center/Gansu Provincial Center for Medical Guideline Industry Technology/Evidence-based Medicine Center of Lanzhou University, was established to develop evidence-based guidelines. Clinical questions (7 background and 12 clinical questions) were identified through literature reviews and expert consensus meetings. Based on systematic reviews/meta-analyses, evidence quality was analyzed and the advantages and disadvantages of interventional measures were weighed with input from patients' preferences. Finally, 20 recommendations were developed through the Delphi-based consensus meetings. These recommendations included disease definitions, etiologies, pathogenesis, syndrome differentiation, diagnosis, and perioperative prevention and treatment.

Background There are debates in acupuncture related systematic reviews and meta-analyses on whether searching Chinese databases to get more Chinese-language studies may increase the risk of bias and overestimate the effect size, and whether the treatment effects of acupuncture differ between Chinese and non-Chinese populations.Methods In this meta-epidemiological study, we searched the Cochrane library from its inception until December 2021, and identified systematic reviews and meta-analyses with acupuncture as one of the interventions. Paired reviewers independently screened the reviews and extracted the information. We repeated the meta-analysis of the selected outcomes to separately pool the results of Chinese- and non-Chinese-language acupuncture studies and presented the pooled estimates as odds ratios (OR) with 95% confidence interval (CI). We calculated the Ratio of ORs (ROR) by dividing the OR of the Chinese-language trials by the OR of the non-Chinese-language trials, and the ROR by dividing the OR of trials addressing Chinese population by the OR of trials addressing non-Chinese population. We explored whether the impact of a high risk of bias on the effect size differed between studies published in Chinese- and in non-Chinese-language, and whether the treatment effects of acupuncture differed between Chinese and non-Chinese population.Results We identified 84 Cochrane acupuncture reviews involving 33 Cochrane groups, of which 31 reviews (37%) searched Chinese databases. Searching versus not searching Chinese databases significantly increased the contribution of Chinese-language literature both to the total number of included trials (54% vs. 15%) and the sample size (40% vs. 15%). When compared with non-Chinese-language trials, Chinese-language trials were associated with a larger effect size (pooled ROR 0.51, 95% CI 0.29 to 0.91). We also observed a higher risk of bias in Chinese-language trials in blinding of participants and personnel (97% vs. 51%) and blinding of outcome assessment (93% vs. 47%). The higher risk of bias was associated with a larger effect estimate in both Chinese-language (allocation concealment: high/unclear risk vs. low risk, ROR 0.43, 95% CI 0.21 to 0.87) and non-Chinese-language studies (blinding of participants and personnel: high/unclear risk vs. low risk, ROR 0.41, 95% CI 0.23 to 0.74). However, we found no evidence that the higher risk of bias would increase the effect size of acupuncture in Chinese-language studies more often than in non-Chinese-language studies (the confidence intervals of all ROR in the high-risk group included 1, Table 3). We further found acupuncture appeared to be more effective in Chinese than in non-Chinese population (Table 4).Conclusions The findings of this study suggest the higher risk of bias may lead to an overestimation of the treatment effects of acupuncture but would not increase the treatment effects in Chinese-language studies more often than in other language studies. The difference in treatment effects of acupuncture was probably associated with differences in population characteristics.

Background and ObjectiveConsidering that physicians and patients widely use acupuncture, it is necessary to explore its adverse effects during treatment. Herein, an evidence map was generated based on published studies to identify acupuncture-induced adverse effects and assess their severity, with the overarching goal of providing references for safe and effective implementation.MethodsA comprehensive literature search was performed in four public databases (PubMed, Embase, Web of science, and the Cochrane Library) to identify relevant studies published up to 15(th) June 2022. In addition, relevant studies were explored in the Epistemonikos database and reference lists were retrieved as a supplement. A MeaSurement Tool to Assess systematic Reviews, Version 2 (AMSTAR-2) quality assessment tool was applied to determine the methodological quality of included systematic reviews (SRs) and/or meta-analysis (MAs), whereas Microsoft Excel 2019 tool was used for data extraction and coding. Heatmaps were generated to display disease type, countries of origin for the first authors, and the sample sizes of original studies. Moreover, bubble charts comprehensively presented intervention categories, adverse reaction types, and evidence levels.ResultsA total of 535 SRs involving 33 adverse reactions were included. Among them, 22 studies were rated as high quality, 28 as moderate, 106 as low, and the rest were of critically-low quality. Numerous adverse effects were described in the studies, including syncope (86 SRs), organ or tissue injury (233 SRs), systemic reactions (113 SRs), infection (19 SRs), and other adverse events (373 SRs). Importantly, these adverse reactions were mainly associated with 19 acupuncture techniques, including electroacupuncture (n = 67), manual acupuncture (n = 47) and acupoint catgut embedding (n = 41). Furthermore, the 535 SRs described 23 diseases, among which symptoms, signs or clinical findings (83 SRs), mental, behavioral or neurodevelopmental disorders (67 SRs), and diseases of the nervous system (66 SRs) had the highest incidence.ConclusionThis evidence mapping explores the adverse effects of acupuncture, showing that there are multiple types of adverse reactions to acupuncture, with milder symptoms. The methodological assessment revealed that most of the included studies were of low- or critically low-quality. Therefore, there is a need for future randomized controlled trials and SRs to comprehensively analyze acupuncture-related adverse events in order to provide reliable and credible evidence.

Background and Objectives: To evaluate and map the reporting and methodological quality of network meta-analysis (NMA) on acupuncture.Methods: Published acupuncture NMAs were searched through eight databases from inception to February 2022. The reporting and methodological quality of included studies was assessed using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses for Network Meta-Analysis (PRISMA-NMA) statement and the Assessment of Multiple Systematic Reviews 2 (AMSTAR-2) checklist.Results: A total of 113 NMAs were identified. Most (99, 87.61%) studies were performed in China. Most studies focused on multiple acupuncture techniques (82.30%), and the main studied ailments were pain and poststroke sequelae (20.24%). The median (interquartile range (IQR)) score of the reporting quality was 26.5 (25-28.5). However, poor reporting rates in the protocol and registration (33.63%) and geometry of the network (35.40%), especially for China-based studies, were identified. The methodological quality of only 2 (1.77%) English studies was high. The reporting rate of Chinese studies was below 15% on each of items 4, 7, 10, and 12.Conclusion: The reporting quality of the NMAs was moderate, but the methodological quality was very low. The reporting and methodological quality of future NMAs, especially for Chinese studies, need further improvement. (c) 2022 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Background: Acupuncture has been widely practiced for primary insomnia (PI). However, the relative benefit and harm among acupuncture therapies remain uncertain.Objectives: To compare and evaluate the effect differences of multiple acupuncture therapies for patients with PI.Methods: Systematic literature search for randomized controlled trials (RCTs). Pairs of reviewers independently conducted literature screening, data extraction, and risk of bias assessment. Meta-analysis was conducted using R and Stata software. The Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development, and Evaluation system (GRADE) was used to assess certainty of evidence and interpret results.Results: Fifty-seven RCTs with 4678 patients were included. Compared with usual treatment, multiple acupuncture therapies showed a better effect for Pittsburgh sleep quality index score. And acupoints catgut embedding (ACE) was proved to be the most effective with a moderate certainty of evidence; auricular acupressure or auricular acupuncture plus manual acupuncture (AP + MA), electroacupuncture plus acupoint application (EA + APA), and intradermal needle (IN) might be also the most effective with low certainty of evidence. ACE, ACE + MA, AP + MA, EA, EA + APA, HPN, MA and PBN + MA showed significantly improvement in effective rate when compared with usual treatment. Insufficient evidence reported on Epworth Sleepiness Scale, Athens Insomnia Scale, and recurrence rate. The most common slight adverse events mainly included hematoma, pain, headache, and bleeding.Conclusions: With moderate to low certainty of evidence, multiple acupuncture therapies showed impressive insomnia improvement, especially ACE, AP + MA, and EA + APA. Differences between therapies were small or insignificant and based-on low or very low certainty of evidence.(c) 2022 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Objective: To conduct a cross-sectional survey on the application status of the Grades of Recommendations Assessment Development and Evaluation (GRADE) in Cochrane systematic reviews (CSRs) of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). Study Design and Setting: : We searched CSRs of TCM from the inception to December 2020 in the Cochrane Library database. General characteristics and details of GRADE were extracted. Results: Among 226 CSRs of TCM, 86 (38.05%) involving 711 outcomes used GRADE to rate the certainty of evidence. Topics mainly focused on genitourinary diseases (17.44%), diseases of the musculoskeletal system or connective tissue (11.63%), and diseases of the nervous system (10.47%). Only 15.89% of the outcomes reported high or moderate certainty of evidence. Acupuncture was the most common intervention. There were no significant differences in evidence certainty between acupuncture and non-acupuncture, between TCM alone and integrated Chinese and western medicine, or between Chinese patent medicines and non-Chinese patent medicines ( P > 0.05). Among 1 273 instances of downgrading, 44.62% were due to the risk of bias and 40.14% due to imprecision. Conclusion: Overall, GRADE approach is not widely used in CSRs of TCM. The certainty of evidence is generally low to very low, mainly because of the serious risk of bias and imprecision. (c) 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Background:This study aims to develop an evidence-based clinical practice guideline of acupuncture in the treatment of patients with moderate and severe cancer pain. Methods:The development of this guideline was triggered by a systematic review published in JAMA Oncology in 2020. We searched databases and websites for evidence on patient preferences and values, and other resources of using acupuncture for treatment of cancer pain. Recommendations were developed through a Delphi consensus of an international multidisciplinary panel including 13 western medicine oncologists, Chinese medicine/acupuncture clinical practitioners, and two patient representatives. The certainty of evidence, patient preferences and values, resources, and other factors were fully considered in formulating the recommendations. The Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development, and Evaluation (GRADE) approach was employed to rate the certainty of evidence and the strength of recommendations. Results:The guideline proposed three recommendations: (1) a strong recommendation for the treatment of acupuncture rather than no treatment to relieve pain in patients with moderate to severe cancer pain; (2) a weak recommendation for the combination treatments with acupuncture/acupressure to reduce pain intensity, decrease the opioid dose, and alleviate opioid-related side effects in moderate to severe cancer pain patients who are using analgesics; and (3) a strong recommendation for acupuncture in breast cancer patients to relieve their aromatase inhibitor-induced arthralgia. Conclusion:This proposed guideline provides recommendations for the management of patients with cancer pain. The small sample sizes of evidence limit the strength of the recommendations and highlights the need for additional research.

Objectives: To assess the efficacy of electro-acupuncture (EA) relative to sham electro-acupuncture (sham EA) in treating chronic severe functional constipation (CSFC). Methods: A comprehensive search for relevant studies published between January 1, 1951 and May 14, 2020 was conducted in PubMed, the Cochrane Library, Chinese Biomedical Literature Database, Web of Science, and EMbase. Two investigators independently selected studies, extracted data, and assessed the quality of the included studies. The software Endnote X9 was used for screening articles, and the Review Manager 5.3 for analyzing data. Results: The meta-analyses involved 6 studies and 1457 individuals. The pooled results favored the EA group for the increase of complete spontaneous bowel movements (CSBMs) per week in the fourth week (MD = 0.80, P = 0.001) during treatment, and further improved in the eight weeks (MD = 1.25, P < 0.001). During the follow-up period, significant changes in CSBMs per week were seen in the experimental group (MD = 1.38, P = 0.008); the effect decreased in the twelfth week (MD = 0.87, P < 0.001). There was no significant difference in the Bristol stool scale score between the two groups in the fourth week (MD = 0.40, P = 0.08), but significant differences were observed in the eighth week (MD = 0.40, P = 0.03). A significant reduction in patient assessment of constipation quality of life (PAC-QOL) score were observed in the EA group during treatment (SMD = -0.83, P < 0.001). No serious adverse events were reported. Conclusions: EA had favorable effects on CSFC, and the longer the treatment duration was, the better was the effect, but the effect showed a certain period of validity. However, the results may be influenced by the clinical heterogeneity of acupuncture points, depth of needling, intensity, and frequency of EA.

Background: Postoperative nausea and vomiting (PONV) is a main complication of surgery, and by now, drugs cannot prevent it completely. Some meta-analyses have proved acupuncture therapy can prevent PONV. However, it is still controversial whether noninvasive acupuncture therapies are comparable with invasive ones. This study uses Bayesian network meta-analysis to compare the effectiveness of different forms of acupuncture in preventing PONV. Methods: PubMed/Medline, Cochrane library, Web of Science, Ebsco, Ovid/Embase, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, Wanfang Database, VIP Database, and China Biology Medicine disc will be searched from inception to May 2020. All randomized control trails meet the criterion will be included. Quality evaluation of included studies will be implemented with Cochrane risk-of-bias tool. STATA 14.0 will be used to perform pairwise meta-analysis. Addis 1.16.8, R 3.6.3, OpenBUGS 3.2.3, and STATA 14.0 will be used to conduct network meta-analysis. The evidence will be assessed by the grading of recommendations assessment, development, and evaluation approach using GRADE Profiler 3.6. Results: The results of this review will be submitted to a peer-reviewed journal for publication and generate a comprehensive review of current evidence. Conclusion: Our results will help to improve the clinical decision-making ability and policy-making in PONV domain. Systematic review registration: The protocol has been registered on INPLASY 202060108.

Objectives Acupuncture is an alternative therapy for Parkinson’s disease (PD), but its efficacy and safety are controversial. This overview aimed to summarize the existing evidence from systematic reviews (SRs) and meta-analyses (MAs) in order to assess the effectiveness of acupuncture as a treatment for PD. Methods Seven electronic databases were searched from their inception until July 2019. The Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development, and Evaluation (GRADE) and Assessment of Multiple Systematic Reviews 2 (AMSTAR2) checklists were used to assess evidence quality and methodological quality, respectively. The outcomes of study were calculated using mean differences (MDs) and risk ratios (RRs) with 95 % confidence intervals (CIs). A meta-analysis was performed using RevMan 5.3 software. Results A total of 12 SRs/MAs were included. All 12 SRs/MAs had more than one critical weakness in AMSTAR 2 and were considered of critically low methodological quality. The quality of evidence was unsatisfactory according to the GRADE checklist. Meta-analyses showed that acupuncture combined with drug for the treatment of PD can significantly improve the total effectiveness rate compared with drug alone (RR = 1.25, 95 % CI 1.16–1.34, P < 0.001). It was also found that acupuncture combined with drug significantly improved the UPDRS I–IV total summed scores (WMD=−6.18, 95 % CI -10.32 to –2.04, P < 0.001) and Webster scores (WMD=−4.20, 95 % CI -7.59 to –0.81, P < 0.001). Conclusion Acupuncture might improve the UPDRS score, Webster score, and total effective rate in treatment of PD. It might be a safe and useful adjunctive treatment for patients with PD. However, we should interpret the findings of these reviews with caution, considering the overall limited methodological and reporting quality.

Purpose: To provide an overview of existing meta-analysis (MAs) on the efficacy and safety of acupuncture for depression, and assess the methodological quality and the strength of evidence of the included MAs. Methods: We searched MAs of randomized trials that have evaluated the effects of acupuncture on depression in three international and three Chinese databases from their inception until August 2019. The methodological quality of included MAs was evaluated with the Assessing the Methodological Quality of Systematic Reviews 2 (AMSTAR-2), and the strength of evidence with the Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE). We used the intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC) to assess reviewer agreement in the pre-experiment. Results: We included 31 MAs and 59 RCTs. The results of included MAs were conflicting, our meta-analyses found that acupuncture may confer small benefit in reducing the severity of depression by end of treatment than no treatment/wait list/treatment as usual(SMD -0.74, 95% CI -1.06 to -0.41, eight trials, 624 participants), control acupuncture (invasive, non-invasive sham controls) (SMD 0.27, 95% CI -0.51 to -0.04, 20 trials, 1055 participants), antidepressants(Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI)/Tetracyclic antidepressants(TCAs)) (SMD -0.28, 95% CI -0.46 to -0.10, 30 trials, 3068 participants), acupuncture plus antidepressants versus antidepressants(SSRI/TCAs) (SMD -0.99, 95% CI -1.37 to -0.61, 17 trials, 1110 participants). Subgroup analyses showed that there was no difference between electro-acupuncture and invasive control (P = 0.37), electroacupuncture and non-invasive control (P = 0.90), manual acupuncture and Tetracyclic antidepressants (P = 0.57), electro-acupuncture and Tetracyclic antidepressants (P = 0.07). Six MAs concluded that acupuncture reduced the incidence of adverse events compared with antidepressants. The evaluation with AMSTAR-2 showed that the quality of included MAs was low or critically low. The results of the GRADE evaluation showed that the strength of evidence was low to very low for most outcomes. Conclusions: Although acupuncture appears to be more effective and safer than no treatment, control acupuncture and antidepressants, the quality of the available evidence was very low. Further methodologically rigorous and adequately powered primary studies are needed to confirm the effectiveness of acupuncture for depression.

Background: Acupoint injection has currently received increasing attention as a treatment for primary osteoporosis (POP), This study aimed to evaluate the efficacy and safety of acupoint injection as a clinical treatment for POP. Methods: Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of acupoint injection compared with conventional non-acupoint injection for POP were identified in searches of seven databases from their inception to March 2019. All data were assessed and extracted by two authors independently. The risk of bias assessment recommended by the Cochrane Collaboration was used to assess the quality of the selected studies. RevMan 5.3 was used to conduct meta-analysis for the efficacy and safety of acupoint injection. Results: Five trials with 337 patients (aged 45–86 years) with bone mineral density (BMD) ≤2 SD were included in our meta-analysis. The results showed that, compared with conventional intramuscular injection, acupoint injection significantly increased the BMD [mean difference (MD) =0.02; 95% CI, 0.01 to 0.03, P0.05). Individuals results showed that acupoint injection improved biochemical indicators, such as NBAP, IGF-I and reduced CTX and leptin levels. While the risk of bias was high in all five trials. Conclusions: This meta-analysis and systematic review suggests that acupoint injection improves BMD and some biochemical indicators in POP patients compared with the effects of conventional intramuscular injection. However, due to the high risk of bias in all the trials reviewed, the evidence remains inconclusive and future research will be required with improved methodological quality.

Background Acupuncture is widely used worldwide, and systematic reviews on acupuncture are increasingly being published. Although acupuncture systematic reviews share several essential elements with other systematic reviews, some essential information for the application of acupuncture is not covered by the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) statement. Considering this, we aimed to develop an extension of the PRISMA statement for acupuncture systematic reviews. Methods We used the PRISMA statement as a starting point, and conducted this study referring to the development strategy recommended by the EQUATOR network. The initial items were collected through a wide survey among evidence users and a review of relevant studies. We conducted a three-round Delphi survey and one-day face-to-face meeting to select items and formulate the checklist. After the consensus meeting, we drafted the manuscript (including the checklist) and sent it to our advisory experts for comments, following which the checklist was refined and circulated to a group of acupuncture systematic review authors for pilot test. We also selected a sample of acupuncture systematic reviews published in 2017 to test the checklist. Results A checklist of five new sub-items (including sub items) and six modified items was formulated, involving content related to title, rationale, eligibility criteria, literature search, data extraction, and study characteristics. We clarified the rationales of the items and provided examples for each item for additional guidance. Conclusion The PRISMA for Acupuncture checklist is developed for improving the reporting of systematic reviews of acupuncture interventions.