SynthesisAcupuncture in medicine : journal of the British Medical Acupuncture Society2021
Identifying patients with chronic pain who respond to acupuncture: results from an individual patient data meta-analysis.
Synthesis in Acupuncture in medicine : journal of the British Medical Acupuncture Society, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 11 citations in OpenAlex.
- Acupuncture in chronic aspecific low back pain: a Bayesian network meta-analysis.Journal of orthopaedic surgery and research · 2022Pooled it
- Identification of subgroup effect with an individual participant data meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials of three different types of therapist-delivered care in low back pain.BMC musculoskeletal disorders · 2021Pooled it
- Prognostic Factors and Treatment Effect Modifiers for Acupuncture Response in Patients with Neurogenic Claudication of Degenerative Lumbar Spinal Stenosis: Secondary Analysis of a Randomized Controlled Trial.Journal of pain research · 2026Trial
- Dose-Response Relationship Between Acupuncture Parameters and Pain Reduction in Chronic Non-Specific Low Back Pain: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.Journal of pain research · 2026Review
- Toward Precision Acupuncture for Pain: Host Genetic Variability, Omics Biomarkers, and Treatment-Response Stratification.Human mutation · 2026Review
- Efficacy of electroacupuncture for cervical spondylosis-related pain in patients with generalized anxiety disorder.World journal of psychiatry · 2025Article
- The Science of Tai Chi and Qigong as Whole Person Health-Part II: Evidence Gaps and Opportunities for Future Research and Implementation.Journal of integrative and complementary medicine · 2025Review
- Baseline predictors of responders to auricular point acupressure in chronic low back pain.Clinical traditional medicine and pharmacology · 2025Article
- Evaluation of a Clustering Approach to Define Distinct Subgroups of Patients With Migraine to Select Electroacupuncture Treatments.Neurology · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
9 authors at 7 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundIn a recent individual patient data meta-analysis, acupuncture was found to be superior to sham and non-sham controls in patients with chronic pain. It has been suggested that a subgroup of patients has an exceptional response to acupuncture. We hypothesized the presence of exceptional acupuncture responders would lead to a different distribution of pain scores in acupuncture versus control groups, with the former being skewed to the right.
methodsThis individual patient data meta-analysis included 39 high-quality randomized trials of acupuncture for chronic headache, migraine, osteoarthritis, low back pain, neck pain and shoulder pain published before December 2015 (n = 20,827). In all, 25 involved sham acupuncture controls (n = 7097) and 25 non-acupuncture controls (n = 16,041). We analyzed the distribution of change scores and calculated the difference in the skewness statistic-which assesses asymmetry in the data distribution-between acupuncture and either sham or non-acupuncture control groups. We then entered the difference in skewness along with standard error into a meta-analysis.
findingsControl groups were more right-skewed than acupuncture groups, although this difference was very small. The difference in skew was 0.124 for non-acupuncture-controlled trials (p = 0.047) and 0.141 for sham-controlled trials (p = 0.029). In a pre-specified sensitivity analysis excluding three trials with outlying results known a priori, the difference in skew between acupuncture and sham was no longer statistically significant (p = 0.2).
conclusionWe did not find evidence to support the notion that there are exceptional acupuncture responders. The challenge remains to identify features of chronic pain patients that can be used to distinguish those that have a good response to acupuncture treatment.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What Socratic holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.