Abstract: We included 10 trials that involved 390 children with ASD. The age range was three to 18 years and the treatment duration ranged from four weeks to nine months. The studies were carried out in Hong Kong, mainland China and Egypt. Two trials compared needle acupuncture with sham acupuncture and found no difference in the primary outcome of core autistic features (RFRLRS total score: MD 0.09; 95% CI -0.03 to 0.21, P = 0.16), although results suggested needle acupuncture might be associated with improvement in some aspects of the secondary outcomes of communication and linguistic ability, cognitive function and global functioning. Six trials compared needle acupuncture plus conventional treatment with conventional treatment alone. The trials used different primary outcome measures and most could not demonstrate effectiveness of acupuncture in improving core autistic features in general, though one trial reported patients in the acupuncture group were more likely to have improvement on the Autism Behavior Checklist (RR 1.53; 95% CI 1.09 to 2.16, P = 0.02) and had slightly better post-treatment total scores (MD -5.53; 95% CI -10.76 to -0.31, P = 0.04). There was no evidence that acupuncture was effective for the secondary outcome of communication and linguistic ability, though there seemed to be some benefit for the secondary outcomes of cognitive function and global functioning. Two trials compared acupressure plus conventional treatment with conventional treatment alone and did not report on the primary outcome. Individual study results suggested there may be some benefit from acupressure for certain aspects of the secondary outcomes of communication and linguistic ability, cognitive function and global functioning. Four trials reported some adverse effects, though there was little quantitative information, and at times both intervention and control groups experienced them. Adverse effects noted included bleeding, crying due to fear or pain, irritability, sleep disturbance and increased hyperactivity. None of the trials reported on quality of life. There are a number of problems with the evidence base: the trials were few in number and included only children; six of the trials were at high risk of bias; they were heterogeneous in terms of participants and intervention; they were of short duration and follow-up; they reported inconsistent and imprecise results, and, due to carrying out large numbers of analyses, they were at risk of false positivity. Current evidence does not support the use of acupuncture for treatment of ASD. There is no conclusive evidence that acupuncture is effective for treatment of ASD in children and no RCTs have been carried out with adults. Further high quality trials of larger size and longer follow-up are needed.

Plain-language summary: We wanted to evaluate the effectiveness and safety of acupuncture for ASD by systematically reviewing all studies of acupuncture for ASD where people were randomly allocated to a treatment or control group (placebo, sham or no treatment), i.e. randomized controlled trials (RCTs). We searched through 15 databases, most recently in September 2010, and read over the titles and abstracts to make sure we identified everything relevant. We found10 RCTs to include in this review. These studies, which were carried out in Hong Kong, mainland China and Egypt, involved 390 children aged between three and 18 years. Two studies compared needle acupuncture with sham acupuncture and found no difference in core autistic features. Results did suggest that needle acupuncture might be associated with improvement in other areas of communication and linguistic ability, cognitive function and global functioning. Six studies compared needle acupuncture plus conventional treatment with conventional treatment alone. They used a range of tools to measure core autistic features and most could not show that acupuncture led to improvement in these. One trial did report, though, that needle acupuncture led to an improvement in scores on Autism Behavior Checklist. There was no evidence for improvement due to acupuncture on communication and linguistic ability but it might be beneficial for cognitive function and global functioning. Two studies compared acupressure plus conventional treatment with conventional treatment alone and found no difference in core autistic features, although acupressure seemed to improve some aspects of the secondary outcomes. Problems that were noted by parents of study participants included crying due to fear or pain, bleeding, sleep disturbance and increased hyperactivity. It is unclear if these were due to the acupuncture treatment. Half of the trials reported some negative effects but did not report how often or how severe these were and sometimes the problems occurred in both the treatment and control groups. None of the studies used measures of quality of life. Overall, acupuncture did not seem to be effective in improving core features of ASD but it might have improved certain developmental and functioning outcomes, at least in the short term. There are problems with assessing acupuncture due to the quality of the evidence. There were a small number of studies and they were all conducted with children. Moreover, there is a high likelihood that they may have been biased due to the methods used not being rigorous enough, the wide variety in the people and interventions in the studies, the inconsistent and imprecise reporting of results and the large number of analyses carried out, which make it more likely a significant result will be found just by chance. In conclusion, current evidence does not support the use of acupuncture for the treatment of ASD. We need high quality trials of larger size and longer follow-up as the evidence base at present has many limitations.