SynthesisThe Clinical journal of pain2019
The Effect of Patient Characteristics on Acupuncture Treatment Outcomes: An Individual Patient Data Meta-Analysis of 20,827 Chronic Pain Patients in Randomized Controlled Trials.
Synthesis in The Clinical journal of pain, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 24 papers, 4 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
24 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 37 citations in OpenAlex.
- Pooled it
- Acupuncture Therapy as an Evidence-Based Nonpharmacologic Strategy for Comprehensive Acute Pain Care: The Academic Consortium Pain Task Force White Paper Update.Pain medicine (Malden, Mass.) · 2022Pooled it
- Identifying patients with chronic pain who respond to acupuncture: results from an individual patient data meta-analysis.Acupuncture in medicine : journal of the British Medical Acupuncture Society · 2021Pooled it
- A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of the Therapeutic Effect of Acupuncture on Migraine.Frontiers in neurology · 2020Pooled 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
- Efficacy and safety of Shi's cervical manipulation versus diclofenac for patients with acute and subacute neck pain: a multicenter clinical randomized trial.Journal of traditional Chinese medicine = Chung i tsa chih ying wen pan · 2025Trial
- Pressure pain threshold and perceived impact of pain differentially predict short-term and long-term pain reduction following acupuncture in fibromyalgia.Journal of integrative medicine · 2025Trial
- Effect of Electroacupuncture vs Sham Treatment on Change in Pain Severity Among Adults With Chronic Low Back Pain: A Randomized Clinical Trial.JAMA network open · 2020Trial
- Therapeutic mechanisms of acupuncture therapy for acute pain in the emergency department.Integrative medicine research · 2026Review
- Functional Brain Connectivity Patterns of Headache-Mental Disorder Comorbidity in Patients With Migraine.CNS neuroscience & therapeutics · 2025Article
- Association between acupuncture treatment exposure and mortality in patients with heart failure: a nationwide cohort study.Frontiers in cardiovascular medicine · 2025Article
- Acupuncture for response and complete pain relief time of acute renal colic: Secondary analysis of a randomized controlled trial.Integrative medicine research · 2024Article
- Temporal summation does not predict the acupuncture response in patients with chronic non-specific low back pain.Frontiers in neurology · 2024Article
- Efficacy of chronic neck pain self-treatment using press needles: a randomized controlled clinical trial.Frontiers in pain research (Lausanne, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Clinical-functional brain connectivity signature predicts longitudinal symptom improvement after acupuncture treatment in patients with functional dyspepsia.Human brain mapping · 2023Article
- Self-administered acupressure for veterans with chronic back pain: Study design and methodology of a type 1 hybrid effectiveness implementation randomized controlled trial.Contemporary clinical trials · 2023Article
- Comparative Efficacy of Intra-Articular Injection, Physical Therapy, and Combined Treatments on Pain, Function, and Sarcopenia Indices in Knee Osteoarthritis: A Network Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials.International journal of molecular sciences · 2023Article
- Acupuncture intervention for acute pain in the Emergency Department trial: a consensus process.Acupuncture in medicine : journal of the British Medical Acupuncture Society · 2022Article
- Bibliometric Analysis of Research Trends on Acupuncture for Neck Pain Treatment Over the Past 20 Years.Journal of pain research · 2021Review
- Overcoming Barriers for Clinical Research of Acupuncture.Medical acupuncture · 2020Review
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
objectivesTo optimally select chronic pain patients for different treatments, as it is of interest to identify patient characteristics that might moderate treatment effect. Our aim was to evaluate the impact of possible moderators on the effect of acupuncture treatment using a large data set.
methodsWe used data from an individual patient data meta-analysis of high-quality randomized trials of acupuncture for chronic headache and migraine, osteoarthritis, and back, neck, and shoulder pain. Using meta-analytic trial-level and patient-level regression analyses, we explored the impact of 5 documented patient characteristics (patients' age at baseline, sex, pain duration, baseline pain severity and baseline psychological distress) on the effect of acupuncture.
resultsA total of 39 trials met the inclusion criteria: 25 use sham-acupuncture controls (n = 7097) and 25 non-acupuncture controls (n = 16,041). Of the 5 patient characteristics analyzed, only baseline pain severity was found to potentially moderate the treatment effect of acupuncture, with patients reporting more severe pain at baseline experiencing more benefit from acupuncture compared to either sham-control or non-acupuncture control. Baseline psychological distress showed small treatment moderating effects, and results for sex were inconsistent. There was no strong evidence that age or duration of pain influenced the response to acupuncture. DISCUSSION: Of 5 patient characteristics tested, we found only baseline severity of pain to potentially moderate the effect of acupuncture treatment. For clinical practice, the evidence from this analysis does not justify stratifying chronic pain patients into subgroups that should or should not receive acupuncture on the basis of these 5 characteristics. Future acupuncture trials should assess other potentially important effect moderators.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion 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 OpenQuestion graph.