Effectiveness of Fu's subcutaneous needling on pain and physical function in patients with knee osteoarthritis: A systematic review and meta-analysis
Bibliographic record
Abstract
OBJECTIVES: This study aims to evaluate the efficacy of Fu's subcutaneous needling (FSN) for knee osteoarthritis (KOA) via a meta-analysis. METHODS: Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of FSN for KOA were searched in PubMed, Cochrane Library, Embase, Web of Science, and other databases up to July 20, 2024. Stata 15.0 was leveraged for data analysis. RESULTS: 30 RCTs were included, involving 2169 individuals. Compared to electroacupuncture, acupuncture, and other therapies, FSN demonstrated significant benefits in reducing the Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Arthritis Index score (WOMAC, improved physical function) [SMD= -1.69 (-2.15 to -1.23), I² = 89.8 %, P < 0.001] and relieving pain (the visual analog scale) [SMD = -1.77( -2.14 to -1.40); I² = 89.8 %, P < 0.001]. Additionally, FSN was more effective in reducing inflammatory cytokine levels, such as interleukin 1β [SMD = -1.65 (-2.36, -0.94); I² = 91.9 %, P < 0.001], interleukin-6 [SMD = -3.93 (-5.08, -2.78); I² = 96.7 %, P < 0.001], and tumor necrosis factor-α [SMD = -2.65 (-3.46, -1.83); I² = 94.8 %, P < 0.001], and increasing the total effective rate [OR = 4.17, 95 % CI: 3.05-5.68; I² = 0.0 %, P < 0.001]. CONCLUSIONS: FSN shows promise as an adjuvant therapy for KOA, with moderate-quality evidence supporting its short-term efficacy in pain relief and functional improvement. Further validation through standardized protocols is required to determine its long-term benefits.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".