Assessment of the safety and efficacy of acupuncture in erectile dysfunction treatment

Objective To assess the safety and efficacy of acupuncture in erectile dysfunction treatment. Methods A systematic literature search was conducted to identify relevant studies. Seven electronic databases including Popline, World Health Organization (WHO) Global Health Library (GHL), System for Information on Grey Literature in Europe (SIGLE), Scopus, Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) Web of Science, PubMed and Virtual Health Library (VHL) were utilized to carry out the search. A manual search was further conducted for relevant publications from references of the included articles, relevant papers in PubMed and Google Scholar, and primary studies that had cited the included papers. Hand-search using each keyword to avoid missing any relevant publications was also carried out. Results The literature search yielded 2 818 reports after removing duplicates using Endnote software. There were 21 studies eligible for full-text screening and five of which were subsequently included. After two studies identified from the manual search were added, a total of seven studies were found suitable to carry out the systematic review and meta-analysis. Five of them were used for quantitative and qualitative analysis, while two were only used for qualitative analysis. There were four clinical trials, one pilot study, one case report, and one animal study. Conclusion Acupuncture can improve male erectile function.