LETTER

Stratification by sex and subgroup is necessary for RCT on IBS

Z X Bian

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Associate Professor Z X Bian
School of Chinese Medicine, Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong, SAR; bzxiang@hkbu.edu.hk

Keywords: irritable bowel syndrome; acupuncture; randomised controlled trial

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

We read with interest the paper by Schneider et al assessing acupuncture treatment in irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), which appears in this issue of Gut(see page 649). They successfully recruited 43 patients with IBS according to the Rome II criteria, and randomly assigned them to receive either acupuncture (n = 22) (AC) or sham acupuncture (n = 21) (SAC) using the so-called "Streitberger needle". Treatment duration was 10 sessions, with an average of two acupuncture sessions per week, and the primary endpoint was improvement in quality of life (QOL) using the functional digestive diseases quality of life questionnaire (FDDQL) and a general quality of life questionnaire (SF-36), compared with baseline assessment. They found that both the AC as well as the SAC group improved significantly in global QOL by the FDDQL at the end of treatment (p = 0.022), with no differences between the groups. This observation . . . [Full text of this article]

A Schneider¹, P Enck², K Streitberger³

¹ Department of General Practice and Health Services Research, University Medical Hospital Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany
² Department of Psychosomatic Medicine, University Medical Hospital Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany
³ Department of Anaesthesiology, University Hospital Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Dr A Schneider
Department of General Practice and Health Services Research, University Medical Hospital Heidelberg, University of Heidelberg, Voßstrasse 2, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany; antonius.schneider@med.uni-heidelberg.de

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Relevant Article

Acupuncture treatment in irritable bowel syndrome

A Schneider, P Enck, K Streitberger, C Weiland, S Bagheri, S Witte, H-C Friederich, W Herzog, and S Zipfel
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