title: Efficacy and Safety of Acupuncture for the Treatment of Functional Dyspepsia: Meta-Analysis.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Functional dyspepsia (FD) is a common gastrointestinal disorder. Currently, no established optimal treatment is available. The aim of this study was to assess the efficacy of acupuncture in relieving symptoms and improving quality of life in patients with FD.
  
  
  METHODS
  PubMed, MEDLINE, Web of Science, Sino-Med, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, VIP databases, and Google Scholar engine were searched from inception through April 2014 to identify randomized controlled trials of acupuncture therapy that reported on overall FD symptoms or FD-related quality of life as a primary outcome. The Cochrane Collaboration's risk of bias tool, RevMan 5.0, and Stata 12.0 software were used for meta-analysis. Data were pooled to calculate relative risk (RRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) of substantial improvement after treatment for dichotomous data and mean differences (SMDs) and 95% CIs for continuous data using random-effects models.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Twenty-four English- and Chinese-language articles describing randomized, placebo-controlled, clinical trials involving 3097 patients were included. Acupuncture significantly improved FD symptoms in studies reporting outcomes using dichotomous (RR, 1.19; 95% CI, 1.12-1.27; p < 0.001) and continuous (standardized MD [SMD], -0.78; 95% CI, -1.21 to -0.35; p = 0.0004) variables. Pooled analyses showed that acupuncture improved FD-related (weighted MD [WMD], 5.97; 95% CI, 3.14-8.80; p = 0.0002) and health-related (WMD, 6.83; 95% CI, 3.02-10.65; p = 0.004) quality of life, without serious adverse events. However, acupuncture failed to increase plasma motilin concentration (SMD, 0.67; 95% CI, -0.07 to 1.42; p = 0.08).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Acupuncture appears to be efficacious in relieving FD symptoms and improving quality of life.
authors.affiliation: Department of Gastroenterology, First Affiliated Hospital of Nanjing Medical University , Nanjing, China .
authors.forename: Weimei
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.affiliation: Department of Gastroenterology, First Affiliated Hospital of Nanjing Medical University , Nanjing, China .
authors.forename: Jiewen
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Su
authors.affiliation: Department of Gastroenterology, First Affiliated Hospital of Nanjing Medical University , Nanjing, China .
authors.forename: Hongjie
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Zhang
mesh_terms: D015670:Acupuncture Therapy; D004415:Dyspepsia / Q000628:therapy*; D006801:Humans