title: [Systematic assessment of acupuncture for treatment of herpes zoster in domestic clinical studies].
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Acupuncture Department, Yueyang Hospital of Integrated TCM and Western Medicine Affiliated to Shanghai University of TCM, China.
authors.forename: Xian-min
authors.initials: XM
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.forename: Guo-miao
authors.initials: GM
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.forename: Yue-lai
authors.initials: YL
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Min
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Fang
authors.forename: You-nan
authors.initials: YN
authors.lastname: Chen
mesh_terms: D015670:Acupuncture Therapy / Q000379:methods*; D006562:Herpes Zoster / Q000628:therapy*; D006801:Humans