OBJECTIVETo evaluate the clinical effect and safety of acupuncture and moxibustion treatment for allergic rhinitis and to analyze the present situation of clinical researches.

METHODSA search in PubMed, Cochrane Library, Chinese Biology Medicine (CBM) disk, and China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) databases was performed to gather the randomized controlled trials about acupuncture and moxibustion treatment for allergic rhinitis, identify additional clinical trials met the inclusion criteria and measure their qualities by using Cochrane Reviewers' Handbook 5.0. Statistical analysis was carried out by RevMan 4.2.8.

RESULTSA meta-analysis was performed on a total of 1076 patients involved in 12 papers which met the inclusion criteria. There were significant differences in both cure rate (Incorporate RR = 1.86, 95% CI 1.51, 2.29, Z = 5.82, P < 0.00001) and marked improvement rate (Incorporate RR = 1.58, 95% CI 1.32, 1.89, Z = 4.94, P < 0.00001) between acupuncture and moxibustion treatment and the routine medicine treatment for allergic rhinitis.

CONCLUSIONAcupuncture and moxibustion to treat allergic rhinitis is effective and safe and may have certain advantage over the routine medicine treatment. However, as for the low quality of partial inclusion literatures, no definite conclusion can be obtained as yet and it still waits for higher quality researches to further prove the dominance of acupuncture and moxibustion treatment for allergic rhinitis.