Shi 2001.

Methods	Randomised controlled trial, parallel groups
Participants	Setting: hospital inpatients and outpatients Treatment group (males): 45 (20) Control group (males): 35 (16) Age: Treatment group: mean 9 (range 5 to 14) years; Control group: mean 10 (range 6 to 13) years Inclusion: childhood absence epilepsy Exclusion: none Seizure type: childhood absence epilepsy Duration of epilepsy: Treatment group: 10 months to 4 years; Control group: 6 months to 5 years Aetiology of epilepsy: not available Baseline seizure frequency: not available Number of AEDs taken: not available
Interventions	Treament group: acupuncture at 6 acupoints (including injection of diazepam to 2 acupoints) alternate day Control group: Na valproate 200 mg tds + piracetam 800 mg tds Duration of treatment: 80 days
Outcomes	Seizure freedom 50% or greater reduction in seizure frequency
Notes	Duration of follow‐up: 1 year
Risk of bias
Bias	Authors' judgement	Support for judgement
Random sequence generation (selection bias)	Unclear risk	Random sequence generation was not described
Allocation concealment (selection bias)	Unclear risk	Allocation concealment was not described
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 groups at baseline was uncertain since there were no data on aetiology 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