Zhang, Qing, Gong, Jing, Dong, Haoxu et al. · Acupuncture in medicine : journal of the British Medical Acupuncture Society · 2019 · DOI
This review examined 16 studies testing whether acupuncture helps people with ME/CFS. The researchers found that acupuncture appeared to reduce fatigue more than fake acupuncture or herbal medicine treatments. However, most studies had quality problems, so the results may not be reliable, and the authors say we need better-designed studies before drawing firm conclusions.
This is the first systematic evaluation of acupuncture's effectiveness for ME/CFS, pooling evidence from multiple countries including understudied Chinese trials. Understanding which treatments may help reduce the debilitating fatigue of ME/CFS is critical, and this review identifies acupuncture as a potential intervention worth further investigation through higher-quality research.
This review does not establish that acupuncture is definitively effective for ME/CFS—the authors explicitly state no firm conclusions can be reached due to poor study quality and potentially inflated effect sizes. The findings cannot determine whether observed improvements reflect true physiological benefit, placebo effects, or study bias. Individual patient outcomes may vary considerably from aggregate findings.
About the PEM badge: “PEM required” means post-exertional malaise was an explicit required diagnostic criterion for participant inclusion in this study — not that PEM was studied, observed, or discussed. Studies using criteria that do not require PEM (e.g. Fukuda, Oxford) are tagged “PEM not required”. How the atlas works →
The first block is for the primary paper and is the citation you should use in research work. The atlas-snapshot line only applies if you are specifically referring to this atlas’s reading of the paper on the date shown.
Primary citation
Zhang, Qing, Gong, Jing, Dong, Haoxu, Xu, Shabei, Wang, Wei, & Huang, Guangying (2019). Acupuncture for chronic fatigue syndrome: a systematic review and meta-analysis.. Acupuncture in medicine : journal of the British Medical Acupuncture Society. https://doi.org/10.1136/acupmed-2017-011582
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-zhang-2019-acupuncture-chronic,
author = {Zhang, Qing and Gong, Jing and Dong, Haoxu and Xu, Shabei and Wang, Wei and Huang, Guangying},
title = {Acupuncture for chronic fatigue syndrome: a systematic review and meta-analysis.},
journal = {Acupuncture in medicine : journal of the British Medical Acupuncture Society},
year = {2019},
doi = {10.1136/acupmed-2017-011582},
note = {PubMed: 31204859},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/zhang-2019-acupuncture-chronic},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-26. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/zhang-2019-acupuncture-chronic
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