Yu 1999.

Methods	Randomised controlled trial, parallel groups. Study period: August 1995 to December 1998
Participants	Setting: hospital outpatients Treatment group (males): 30 (18) Control group: 30 (not available) Age Treatment group: 6 to 43 years; Control group: not available Inclusion: Epilepsy Exclusion: space occupying lesions on CT scan Seizure type: not available Duration of epilepsy Treatment group: 3 months to 10 years; Control group: not available Aetiology of epilepsy: not available Baseline seizure frequency: not available Number of AEDs taken: not available
Interventions	Treatment group: acupuncture at 7 acupoints every 3 to 5 days for 20 to 30 times Control group: phenytoin 100 mg tds ± oryzanol Duration of treatment: 60 to 150 days
Outcomes	75% or greater reduction in seizure frequency 50% or greater reduction in seizure frequency
Notes	Duration of follow‐up: 6 months
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	The comparability of the groups at baseline was questionable 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