Regarding a recently published meta-analysis on acupuncture for obesity

The Postgraduate Medical Journal recently published a paper online entitled ‘Acupuncture vs sham acupuncture for simple obesity: a systematic review and meta-analysis’.1 The authors correctly emphasised the growing threat of obesity to global health, and the importance of evaluating the efficacy of proposed treatments. Because of their laudable research goals I read this paper with great interest, however, I was disappointed to discover serious methodological mistakes. The most egregious error is that neither the title nor abstract accurately describe the contents of the article in question. The meta-analyses are described as comparing acupuncture with sham (or placebo) acupuncture, however, two of the eight trials included in the quantitative synthesis compared acupuncture to a ‘no treatment’ control group.2 3 …