Moxibustion for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Table 2

GRADE certainty grading evaluation.

Certainty assessment							No. of patients		Effect (95% CI)	Certainty
No. of studies	Design	Risk of bias	Inconsistency	Indirectness	Imprecision	Publication bias	Experimental group	Control group
Clinical efficacy (moxibustion vs. acupuncture)
10	Randomized trials	Serious^a	No serious inconsistency	No serious indirectness	No serious imprecision	None	321/346 (92.8%)	252/341 (73.9%)	OR 4.58 (2.85, 7.35)	⊕⊕⊕○ Moderate
FS-14 (moxibustion vs. acupuncture)
6	Randomized trials	Serious^a	Very serious^b	No serious inconsistency	No serious imprecision	None	205	202	MD −1.76 (−2.22, −1.30)	⊕○○○ Very low
FAI (moxibustion vs. acupuncture)
3	Randomized trials	Serious^a	Serious^b	No serious inconsistency	Serious^c	None	106	106	MD −16.36 (−26.58, −6.14)	⊕○○○ Very low
Clinical efficacy (moxibustion vs. drugs)
5	Randomized trials	Serious^a	No serious inconsistency	No serious indirectness	Serious^c	None	158/174 (90.8%)	103/169 (60.9%)	OR 6.39 (3.48, 11.59)	⊕⊕○○ Low
FS-14 (moxibustion vs. drugs)
1	Randomized trials	Serious^a	No serious inconsistency	No serious inconsistency	Very serious^c	None	41	39	MD −4.17 (−4.41, −3.93)	⊕○○○ Very low

^aRisk of bias: most studies had a high risk of bias in methodology. ^bInconsistency: considerable heterogeneity. ^cImprecision: small sample size.