Han 2008.

Methods	Randomised controlled trial, parallel groups
Participants	Setting: hospital patients Treatment group (males): 85 (45) Control group (males): 85 (53) Age: Treatment group: mean 33.4 (SD 20.15) years; Control group: mean 34.9 (SD 15.57) years Inclusion: generalized epilepsy Exclusion: none Seizure type: generalized epilepsy Duration of epilepsy: not available Aetiology of epilepsy: not available Baseline seizure frequency: not available Number of AEDs taken: not available
Interventions	Treatment group: catgut implantation at 9 acupoints (9 points were divided into 3 groups, each group was used in alternate cycle) plus 1 additional acupoints according to Traditional Chinese Medicine diagnosis, applied every 15 days Control group: sodium valproate 200 mg tds Duration of treatment: 90 days
Outcomes	30% or greater reduction in epilepsy score Post‐treatment epilepsy score
Notes	Duration of follow‐up: 3 months
Risk of bias
Bias	Authors' judgement	Support for judgement
Random sequence generation (selection bias)	High risk	Allocation to treatment groups according to sequence of attendance (quasi‐random)
Allocation concealment (selection bias)	High risk	Allocation to treatment groups was done according to sequence of attendance and hence allocation was considered not concealed
Blinding (performance bias and detection bias) All outcomes	High risk	The participants and personnel and outcome assessors were not blinded
Blinding of participants and personnel (performance bias) All outcomes	High risk	The participants and personnel and outcome assessors were not blinded
Blinding of outcome assessment (detection bias) All outcomes	High risk	The outcome assessors were not blinded
Incomplete outcome data (attrition bias) All outcomes	Low risk	There were no dropouts
Selective reporting (reporting bias)	Low risk	All outcomes were reported
Other bias	High risk	Comparability of the groups at baseline was uncertain since there were no data on aetiology and duration of epilepsy, current AED treatments, and frequency of seizures at baseline. There was no sham or placebo control and hence there might be placebo effect which causes bias. Treatment was variable within the treatment group and might introduce bias