Objective To systematically evaluate the clinical efficacy of acupuncture for peptic ulcer.Methods Randomized controlled trials of acupuncture for peptic ulcer were searched from China National Knowledge Infrastructure(CNKI)

WanFang Database

Chinese Scientific and Technological Journals(VIP)

China Biomedicine(CBM)

PubMed and the Cochrane Library from the establishment time of databases to September

2016.Data extraction and quality evaluation were implemented for the literature which met the inclusive criteria.The RevMan 5.3software was used to make Meta-analysis.Results Sixteen papers including 1 570 patients of peptic ulcer were included.The results of Meta-analysis showed that there was no statistical significance between acupuncture and western medicine in the effective rate

the healing rate of ulcer area and the HP negative rate(all P>0.05);the recurrence rate of acupuncture was significantly lower than that of western medicine[RR=0.35

95%CI(0.14

0.84)

P<0.05].Acupuncture plus western medicine was significantly different from simple western medicine in the effective rate

the healing rate of ulcer area and the recurrence rate[RR=1.20

95% CI(1.04

1.38)

P=0.01;RR=1.29

95% CI(1.06

1.58)

P=0.01;RR=0.27

95% CI(0.16

0.45)

P<0.00001].The analysis of evidence grade(GRADE)pre-sented that the healing rate of ulcer area and the HP negative rate of acupuncture were "low grade"

and others were "extremely low grade".Conclusion Acupuncture combined with western medicine has some advantages for peptic ulcer compared with the conventional western medicine

which needs further confirmation due to the lower evidence grade.Larger samples

randomized controlled trials with high quality are highly recommended.