[Systematic assessment of acupuncture for treatment of herpes zoster in domestic clinical studies].
OBJECTIVE
To assess the effectiveness of acupuncture for treatment of herpes zoster.


METHODS
According to the requirement of evidence-based medicine, acupuncture, body acupuncture, electroacupuncture, head acupuncture, three edged needle, plum-blossom needle, fire needle, elongated needle, encircling needling, herpes zoster, etc. were selected as subject words to retrieve the relative medical database at home, and clinically randomized controlled trials were used as enrolled criteria, the treatment group were treated with acupuncture or acupuncture plus other therapies, and the control group with medicine, the cured rate and the time of killing pain for herpes zoster were used as assessment indexes. Altogether 43 papers were enrolled. Among them 10 papers were conducted for Meta-analysis by RevMan 4.2.9.


RESULTS
The total OR was 4.27 with 95% CI [2.90, 6.29] of the clinically cured rate in the 10 studies, and the total OR was -7.64 with 95% CI [-8.12, -7.15] of the time of killing pain in the 4 studies. The therapeutic effect in the treatment group on herpes zoster was superior to that of the western medicine (P < 0.01).


CONCLUSIONS
Acupuncture therapy for herpes zoster is effective, but more high-quality studies are required to prove this view point.
Yu
Xian-min
XM
Acupuncture Department, Yueyang Hospital of Integrated TCM and Western Medicine Affiliated to Shanghai University of TCM, China.
Zhu
Guo-miao
GM
Chen
Yue-lai
YL
Fang
Min
M
Chen
You-nan
YN
D015670:Acupuncture Therapy / Q000379:methods*; D006562:Herpes Zoster / Q000628:therapy*; D006801:Humans