Abstract
The aim of this article was to assess the clinical evidence for or against the blinding effect of non-penetrating sham needle as placebo needle. This systematic review included randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of acupuncture taking non-penetrating sham acupuncture as placebo needle. Systematic searches were conducted in 13 electronic databases up to July 2012: Medline, PubMed, the Cochrane Library, CINAHL, EMBASE, a Chinese medical database. All parallel or cross-over RCTs of acupuncture for the blinding effect of non-penetrating needle were chosen without language restrictions. Finally, totally 7 RCTs met the inclusion criteria. In conclusion, our systematic review and meta-analysis demonstrate that the non-penetrating needle is an effective instrument for placebo control in the acupuncture RCTs.
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Author: Gong Xing-lan, master of medicine, resident physician
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Gong, Xl., Pan, Zh., Shen, Y. et al. Blinding effect of non-penetrating sham needle in the randomized controlled trials of acupuncture: A systematic review. J. Acupunct. Tuina. Sci. 12, 8–11 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11726-014-0738-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11726-014-0738-1