Efficacy of fire-needle for acne: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials

Abstract Objective To evaluate the efficacy of fire-needle therapy for acne to provide an objective basis for clinical decisions. Method PubMed, Chinese Biomedical Medicine disc (CBM), Chinese National knowledge infrastructure (CNKI), and Wanfang database were searched to include eligible randomized controlled trails. Bias risk was assessed and data were extracted. Meta-analysis was performed and as was subgroup analysis. Results Thirty-three RCTs involving 3362 patients were included. Most of them had a high risk or unclear risk of bias regarding allocation concealment, incomplete outcome data and selective reporting. Compared with control groups, meta-analysis revealed that fire-needle therapy had an overall higher total effectiveness rate ( RR =1.19, 95%CI: 1.16–1.22, P RR =1.20, 95%CI: 1.14–1.28, P RR =1.18, 95%CI: 1.12–1.24, P RR =1.18, 95%CI: 1.13–1.24, P RR =1.28, 95%CI: 1.18–1.39, P Conclusion Our study showed that fire-needle appears to be an effective therapy for treating acne, but the evidence is currently insufficient due to the poor quality of the studies. The safety of fire-needle therapy is also uncertain due to the small sample size and the lack of reporting in included articles. Larger sample, higher quality studies are needed.