Mary Ann Liebert, Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 4(16), p. 397-409, 2010
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Background: Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is popular for treatment of fibromyalgia (FM) although there is a lack of comprehensive evaluation of current clinical evidence for TCM's therapeutic effect and safety. Objective: To review systematically the beneficial and harmful effects of TCM therapies for FM. Methods: We searched six English and Chinese electronic databases for randomized clinical trials (RCTs) on TCM for treatment of FM. Two authors extracted data and assessed the trial quality independently. RevMan 5 software was used for data analyses with an effect estimate presented as mean difference (MD) with a 95% confidence interval (CI). Results: Twenty-five RCTs were identified with 1516 participants for this review. Seven trials (28%) were evaluated as having a low risk of bias and the remaining trials were identified as being as unclear or having a high risk of bias. Overall, ten trials were eligible for the meta-analysis, and data from remaining 15 trials were synthesized qualitatively. Acupuncture reduced the number of tender points (MD, –3.21; 95% CI –4.23 to –2.11; p