Acupuncture for chronic hepatitis B.

CONCLUSIONS: The clinical effects of acupuncture for chronic hepatitis B remain unknown. The included trials lacked data on all-cause mortality, health-related quality of life, serious adverse events, hepatitis-B related mortality, and hepatitis-B related morbidity. The vast number of excluded trials lacked clear descriptions of their design and conduct. Whether acupuncture influences adverse events considered not to be serious is uncertain. It remains unclear if acupuncture affects HBeAg, and if it is associated with reduction in detectable HBV DNA. Based on available data from only one or two small trials on adverse events considered not to be serious and on the surrogate outcomes HBeAg and HBV DNA, the certainty of evidence is very low. In view of the wide usage of acupuncture, any conclusion that one might try to draw in the future should be based on data on patient and clinically relevant outcomes, assessed in large, high-quality randomised sham-controlled trials with homogeneous groups of participants and transparent funding.
PMID: 31436846 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]

Source: Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews - August 21, 2019 Category: General Medicine Authors: Kong Z, Liang N, Yang GL, Zhang Z, Liu Y, Yang Y, Liu YX, Wang QG, Zhang F, Zhang HY, Nikolova D, Jakobsen JC, Gluud C, Liu JP Tags: Cochrane Database Syst Rev Source Type: research