Acupuncture therapy shows superior results compared to placebo or standard pharmacological therapies in treating fibromyalgia syndrome and pain.
The authors of the study conducted an extensive analysis of existing literature on the subject, scrutinizing 11 databases until May 2025. Two reviewers worked independently on the study selection, data extraction, and assessment of methodological quality using different tools, such as the Measurement Tool to Assess systematic Reviews-2, the 2020 version of Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses, and the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development, and Evaluation.
They analyzed thirteen systematic reviews and meta-analyses, in which they found that acupuncture therapy provided superior pain relief compared to sham acupuncture therapy or standard pharmacological treatments. The researchers reported no adverse effects associated with acupuncture therapy. However, most of these studies lacked high-quality evidence, with their overall quality of evidence varying from 'very low' to 'moderate'. The authors concluded the benefit of acupuncture therapy to be real but cautioned the evidence supporting this claim is of low quality due to methodological shortcomings in the reviewed studies.
