Acupuncture Effective for Symptom Relief in Irritable Bowel Syndrome, finds study
A meta-analysis of sham-controlled clinical trials has found that acupuncture significantly improves symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) compared with sham treatment. The findings support acupuncture as an effective complementary therapy for IBS symptom relief, although further high-quality studies are needed to refine patient selection and optimize treatment protocols. The study was published in Gastroenterology journal by Hai-Zhen Z. and colleagues.
In order to accurately determine the effectiveness of acupuncture as a therapy with the exclusion of powerful placebo effects, an intensive literature search was carried out in leading databases of international and Chinese scientific articles. The authors applied strict inclusion criteria to select the best quality RCTs investigating the effect of real acupuncture vs. inert sham non-acupoint control on the treatment of IBS patients.
Among the pre-specified primary outcomes were selected global clinical response rate, overall GI symptoms, QOL, as well as long-term follow-up parameters. To analyze mathematical synthesis, dichotomous outcomes were statistically combined based on risk ratios (RR), whereas continuous outcomes were summarized based on SMD or MD with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) in random-effects models.
Key findings:
- The systematic review successfully reviewed data from 12 randomized controlled trials, where altogether 1,105 subjects were involved in the analysis, with 11 of those trials being used for the quantitative meta-analysis.
- True acupuncture showed a significantly better clinical response to IBS than the sham non-acupoint control group, resulting in a risk ratio of 1.61 (95% CI, 1.25 to 2.07; I2 = 77%), based on the evaluation of 1,004 subjects.
- After the intervention was completed, the acupuncture significantly improved the total symptom severity compared to the sham therapy, which resulted in a standardized mean difference of 0.79 (95% CI, 0.30 to 1.28; I2 = 86%).
- The benefit of the true acupuncture was also apparent during the long-term follow-up period, with a significant decrease in the symptom level being traced with an SMD of 0.70 (95% CI, 0.22 to 1.18; I2 = 83%).
- The researchers also noticed a statistically significant increase in the validated patient quality of life indicators at the end of treatment, resulting in an SMD of 0.36 (95% CI, 0.01 to 0.71).
In summary, it was found that acupuncture was highly effective at increasing the response rate and overall symptoms of IBS patients at the end of the treatment period as compared to sham non-acupoint acupuncture. Because of the significant heterogeneity and the low level of evidence, further confirmation of our research is needed through high-quality large-scale trials. The remarkable statistics obtained from reality form the indispensable empirical basis of modern integrated medicine.
Reference:
Zheng, H.-Z., Zou, H.-L., Chen, B.-H., Li, Y.-J., Wu, W.-Z., & Huang, X.-B. (2026). Acupuncture versus sham non-acupoint acupuncture for irritable bowel syndrome: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Gastroenterology. https://doi.org/10.1053/j.gastro.2026.06.017
