Chen 2006a.

Methods	Groups: A: acupuncture, B: medicine control. Blinding: no information. Dropouts/withdrawals: 0. Duration of intervention: no information of baseline; 4 weeks' treatment; no follow‐up.
Participants	Number of participants screenings/included/analyzed: not reported/60/60. Number of participants in each group: 30:30 Demographics: aged 36‐65 years, mean age 54.75 years in A, aged 33‐61 years, mean age 51.72 years in B; number of women 10:9. Number of participants who used antihypertensive: no information. Course of disease: from 1 month to 10 years, mean 5.65 years in A; from 6.5 months to 10.42 years, mean 5.39 years in B Setting: inpatients from Department of Acupuncture and Moxibustion in the first hospital in Wuhan.
Interventions	Acupuncture points: Fengchi (bilateral). Information on acupuncturists: none. Deqi achieved?: yes. Control group intervention: metoprolol (25 mg pills, Batch number Su Wei medicine approved by 1985, 326201), 100 mg, once daily, at 8 a.m., for 4 weeks.
Outcomes	Primary outcome: change in SBP/DBP before and after treatment (measured on last 3 days of acupuncture sessions). Secondary outcome: change in BP.
Study detail	Position for measuring BP: no information. BP measurements: no information. Time of each session: needles retained for 30 min, stimulated every 10 min. Number of treatment sessions: 28 (continuously for 4 weeks). Frequency of treatment sessions: no information, 2 weeks was a course. Time of recruiting: March 2004 to December 2004. Adverse events: no information.
Publication detail	Language of publication: Chinese. Commercial funding: no. Non‐commercial funding: yes (State administration of TCM). Publication status: peer review journal.
Notes	Baseline BP: mean BP on 3 different days before treatment. Last BP: mean BP in last 3 days before ceasing treatment.
Risk of bias
Bias	Authors' judgement	Support for judgement
Random sequence generation (selection bias)	Low risk	Random number table.
Allocation concealment (selection bias)	Unclear risk	No description.
Blinding (performance bias and detection bias) All outcomes	High risk	Participants and investigators not blinded to acupuncture or pills.
Incomplete outcome data (attrition bias) All outcomes	Low risk	No dropouts or exclusions from analysis.
Selective reporting (reporting bias)	Low risk	Relevant outcomes reported.
Other bias	Unclear risk	No description.