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Acupuncture for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: An Overview of Systematic Reviews

  • Literature Research
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Chinese Journal of Integrative Medicine Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Objective

To evaluate the quality of the existing studies and summarize evidence of important outcomes of meta-analyses/systematic reviews (MAs/SRs) of CFS.

Methods

Potentially eligible studies were searched in the following electronic databases from inception to 1 September, 2019: Chinese Biomedical Literature Database (CBM), China Science and Technology Journal Database (VIP), China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), WanFang Database (WF), Web of Science, Embase, PubMed and Cochrane Library. Grades of Recommendation, Assessment, Development, and Evaluation (GRADE) was used to evaluate the quality of evidence. The methodological quality of the literature was evaluated by A Measure Tool to Assess Systematic Reviews-2 (AMSTAR-2) and the quality of the report was assessed by Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses (PRISMA). The intra-class correlation coefficient was used to assess the consistency of the reviewers, with an overall intraclass correlation coefficient score of 0.967.

Results

Ten MAs/SRs were included. The overall conclusions were that acupuncture had good safety and efficacy in the treatment of CFS, but some of these results were contradictory. The GRADE indicated that out of the 17 outcomes, high-quality evidence was provided in 0 (0%), moderate in 3 (17.65%), low in 10 (58.82%), and very low in 4 (23.53%). The results of AMSTAR-2 showed that the methodological quality of all included studies was critically low. The PRISMA statement revealed that 8 articles (80%) were in line with 20 of the 27-item checklist, and 2 articles (20%) matched with 10–19 of the 27 items.

Conclusion

We found that acupuncture on treating CFS has the advantage for efficacy and safety, but the quality of SRs/MAs of acupuncture for CFS need to be improved.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Acu-Mox and Tuina, Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Chengdu, 610075, China

    Zi-han Yin, Lin-jia Wang, Ying Cheng, Jiao Chen, Xiao-juan Hong, Ling Zhao & Fan-rong Liang

  2. Acupuncture Clinical Research Center, Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Chengdu, 610075, China

    Zi-han Yin, Lin-jia Wang, Jiao Chen, Xiao-juan Hong, Ling Zhao & Fan-rong Liang

Authors
  1. Zi-han Yin
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  2. Lin-jia Wang
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  3. Ying Cheng
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  4. Jiao Chen
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  5. Xiao-juan Hong
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  6. Ling Zhao
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  7. Fan-rong Liang
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Contributions

Conceptualization: Yin ZH, Zhao L, Liang FR; data curation: Wang LJ, Yin ZH; formal analysis: Yin ZH, Wang LJ; funding acquisition: Zhao L, Liang FR; methodology: Yin ZH: project administration: Zhao L, Liang FR; supervision: Chen J. Hong XJ; writing-original draft: Yin ZH, Wang LJ; writing-review and editing: Yin ZH, Cheng Y, Zhao L.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Fan-rong Liang.

Additional information

Conflict of interest

None declared.

Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 81590951 and No. 81722050)

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Yin, Zh., Wang, Lj., Cheng, Y. et al. Acupuncture for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: An Overview of Systematic Reviews. Chin. J. Integr. Med. 27, 940–946 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11655-020-3195-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11655-020-3195-3

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