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 .
Short-term efficacy of topical capsaicin therapy in severely affected fibromyalgia patients
The purpose of this study was to evaluate the short-term efficacy of topical capsaicin treatment in patients severely affected by fibromyalgia . One hundred and thirty fibromyalgia patients were r and omly divided into two groups . The  control group , 56 women and 4 men who continued their medical treatment , and the  capsaicin group , 70 women who apart from continuing their medical treatment , also underwent topical capsaicin 0.075 % 3 times daily for 6 weeks . At the beginning of the program , there were no significant differences between the two groups in any of the analyzed parameters . At the end of the treatment , there were significant improvements in the capsaicin group in the myalgic score ( 5.21 vs 3.8 , p = 0.02 ) and global subjective improvement ( 22.8 vs 5 % , p = 0.001 ) . Six weeks after the end of the treatment , the experimental group showed significant differences in Visual Analogue Scale of depression ( 5.63 vs 7.35 , p = 0.02 ) , Fibromyalgia Impact Question naire ( 67.89 vs 77.7 , p = 0.02 ) , role limitations due to emotional problems ( 36.17 vs 17.2 , p = 0.05 ) , Fatigue Severity Scale ( 6.2 vs 6.6 , p = 0.04 ) , myalgic score ( 3.94 vs 2.66 , p = 0.02 ) and pressure pain threshold ( 79.25 vs 56.71 , p = 0.004 ) . In conclusion , patients severely affected by fibromyalgia can obtain short-term improvements following topical capsaicin 0.075 % treatment three times daily for 6 weeks
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 .