Acupuncture treatment of insomnia has been reported for many years

but its validity remains controversial up to now.In the present review

the authors took "Acupuncture"

"Insomnia" as the key words to do a literature search from databases in both Chinese and English via computer retrieval system and also conducted a hand-made retrieval from journals of Chinese medicine as Chinese Acu-moxibustion

and collections of theses of the related academic conferences.Then

they made a systemic evaluation on the original articles from methodology

diagnosis

criteria for the enlisted and excluded patients

intervention methods of acupuncture and control groups

standards for assessing the curative efficacy

follow-up visit

etc.Of the retrieved 80 clinical articles

20 are RCT(randomized controlled trails) composed of 1907 cases

including 4 high-quality trails and 16 lower-quality trails.Regarding the assessment of the therapeutic effect

measuring scales are often adopted in overseas studies

while in domestic researches

self-drawn standards are frequently used.In conclusion

there have had no high-quality clinical trails about acupuncture treatment of primary insomnia in China at the present

and the related evaluating methods could not definitely confirm the efficacy of acupuncture in relieving insomnia.Therefore

a strict and scientific clinical trail scheme being in line with evidence-based medicine is urgently needed in the coming studies on acupuncture treatment of primary insomnia.