Acupoint stimulation for chronic urticaria: a systematic review of randomized controlled trials

IntroductionStandard treatments are often unsatisfactory on chronic urticaria (CU). Acupoint stimulation, including acupuncture, electroacupuncture, acupoint catgut embedding, acupoint injection, has shown benefit about alleviating itching, reducing amount and range of the lesions. However, the methodological quality of these trials is unknown. Thus, the objective of this review is to evaluate the quality and effectiveness of acupoint stimulation for chronic urticaria.MethodsWe searched PubMed, Embase, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, CNKI, CBM, VIP, Wanfang databases from January 1966 to June 2015. Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) on acupoint stimulation for CU were included. The Cochrane risk of bias tool was used to evaluate methodological quality.ResultsEight RCTs met the inclusion criteria, which were all low quality. Acupuncture plus other treatment was significantly superior to western medicine alone and autologous blood injection plus herbal medicine was better than herbal medicine alone in increasing the number of cured patients.ConclusionsAcupoint stimulation may provide benefit in CU; however, more large scale, high quality studies are needed for assessing the effects before it is recommended.