Objective To explore whether there is enough clinical evidence to confirm that hyperbaric oxygen (HBO) does more good than other treatments in treating patients with diabetic peripheral neuropathy. Methods Published clinical trials on hyperbaric oxygen treatment for diabetic peripheral neuropathy were collected through electronic searches of PubMed, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, EMbase, Science Citation Index Expanded, the China Biological Medicine Database (CBM-disc), the Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) and the VIP Database for Chinese Technical Periodicals (from the date of establishment of the databases to July 2010). The bibliographies of the retrieved articles were also checked. Results A total of 7 trials involving 446 patients with diabetic peripheral neuropathy were included. All studies reported positive results regarding the effects,but the quality of the studies was generally poor. The main problem was that most trials were reported as randomized and controlled, but with no description of the methods of randomization, concealment and blinding. Conclusions HBO in the treatment of diabetic peripheral neuropathy is promising based on present evidence. However at present,definite conclusions cannot be drawn about whether hyperbaric oxygen treatment is superior to the alternatives for patients with diabetic peripheral neuropathy. Higher quality randomized and controlled trials are required.

Objective To evaluate the effectiveness of constraint-induced movement therapy (CIMT),modified CIMT and forced use in the treatment of the upper limbs of adults after stroke. Methods Published ac-counts of trials of these techniques were located through electronic searches of the following databases: PubMed,EBSCO, Ovid, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trails, EMbase, Science Citation Index (Expanded),HighWire Press, CBMDisc, CCTR, CNKI and VIP from the date of establishment of the databases to September 2009. The bibliographies of the articles thus retrieved were also checked. Results A total of 12 trials involving 648 patients were discovered. Meta-analysis showed that CIMT has been shown to increase movement efficiency, reduce normalized movement time, increase use of the more affected arm, improve the quality of use of the more affected arm and reduce the impact of the affected arm. C1MT showed no significant effect in improving independence in daily life compared with traditional rehabilitation. Conclusions To some extent, (modified) CIMT promotes arm rehabilita-tion after stroke effectively. However, these studies were small and their quality was poor. They had different follow-up points, assessed with different rating scales, and the course of stroke in the studies was also different. So more high-quality and large-scale randomized controlled trials are needed.