Acupuncture for obesity: a systematic review

Obesity has become a major health challenge for both patients and family physicians. Well-known methods of weight reduction such as diet and exercise are often difficult to comply with due to lifestyle and quality of life issues. Other methods such as diet pills or surgery have potentially serious side effects and often do not show long-term benefit. In an attempt to find a less invasive and effective modality of treatment, traditional Chinese medicine, particularly acupuncture and auriculotherapy, has become a topic of research in this field. The authors conducted a review of the current evidence regarding the use of auricular and body acupuncture in the treatment of obesity from their beginning to June 2014. Any published trial using randomized assignment to the intervention and control groups, in full text were included. Overall, moderate evidence in favor of acupuncture over exercise in the treatment of obesity was found. However, due to the limitations of the published studies in this field, it is necessary to conduct a large high quality randomized controlled trial in order to determine whether acupuncture should be used as a treatment modality to achieve weight loss in obese individuals. © 2016, Shanghai Research Institute of Acupuncture and Meridian and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.