There was low- quality evidence that acupuncture  improves pain compared to no treatment or st and ard treatment , but good evidence that it is no better than sham acupuncture .
The evidence for homoeopathy , spinal manipulation and herbal medicine was limited .
No firm conclusions were drawn for efficacy of either spinal manipulation or homoeopathy for FM .
Background Fibromyalgia ( FM ) is a chronic , debilitating pain disorder .
Dissatisfaction with conventional medicine can lead people with FM to turn to complementary and alternative medicine ( CAM ) .
Two previous overviews of systematic review s of CAM for FM have been published , but they did not assessed for risk of bias in the review process .
A randomized controlled trial of acupuncture added to usual treatment for fibromyalgia.
OBJECTIVE To evaluate the effectiveness of acupuncture for fibromyalgia . METHODS Fifty-eight women with fibromyalgia were allocated r and omly to receive either acupuncture together with tricyclic antidepressants and exercise ( n=34 ) , or tricyclic antidepressants and exercise only ( n=24 ) . Patients rated their pain on a visual analogue scale . A blinded assessor evaluated both the mean pressure pain threshold value over all 18 fibromyalgia points and quality of life using SF-36 . RESULTS At the end of 20 sessions , patients who received acupuncture were significantly better than the control group in all measures of pain and in 5 of the SF-36 subscales . After 6 months , the acupuncture group was significantly better than the control group in numbers of tender points , mean pressure pain threshold at the 18 tender points and 3 subscales of SF-36 . After one year , the acupuncture group showed significance in one subscale of the SF-36 ; at 2 years there were no significant differences in any outcome measures . CONCLUSION Addition of acupuncture to usual treatments for fibromyalgia may be beneficial for pain and quality of life for 3 months after the end of treatment . Future research is needed to evaluate the specific effects of acupuncture for fibromyalgia
There was low- quality evidence that acupuncture  improves pain compared to no treatment or st and ard treatment , but good evidence that it is no better than sham acupuncture .
The evidence for homoeopathy , spinal manipulation and herbal medicine was limited .
No firm conclusions were drawn for efficacy of either spinal manipulation or homoeopathy for FM .
Background Fibromyalgia ( FM ) is a chronic , debilitating pain disorder .
Dissatisfaction with conventional medicine can lead people with FM to turn to complementary and alternative medicine ( CAM ) .
Two previous overviews of systematic review s of CAM for FM have been published , but they did not assessed for risk of bias in the review process .