Liu 2011.

Methods	Groups: A: acupuncture + medicine, B: medicine control. Blinding: no information. Dropouts/withdrawals: 0. Duration of intervention: no information of baseline; 30 days' treatment; no follow‐up visits.
Participants	Number of participants screening/included/analyzed: not reported/106/106. Number of participants in each group: 53:53. Demographics: mean age 46.5 years in A, mean age 45.2 years in B; number of women 23:25. Number of participants who used antihypertensives: no information. Course of disease: mean 10.68 years in A; mean 11.16 years in B. Setting: People's Hospital in Tianzhu.
Interventions	Acupuncture points: main points: Fengchi, Quchi, Zusanli, Sanyinjiao; supplementary points: deficiency of liver‐yin and kidney‐yin: Taixi, Taichong; the phlegm wet resistance: Fenglong. Information on acupuncturists: no information. Deqi achieved?: yes. Control group intervention: captopril, 12.5 mg TID for 30 days.
Outcomes	Primary outcome: change in SBP/DBP before and after treatment (time of measurement not reported but likely on last day after acupuncture session). Secondary outcome: change in BP.
Study detail	Position for measuring BP: no information. BP measurements: no information. Time of each session: needles retained for 20 min. Number of treatment sessions: 30 (lasting 2 courses). Frequency of treatment sessions: once daily, 15 days was a course. Time of recruiting: January 2002 to December 2009. Adverse events: no information.
Publication detail	Language of publication: Chinese. Commercial funding: no. Non‐commercial funding: no. Publication status: peer review journal: yes.
Notes
Risk of bias
Bias	Authors' judgement	Support for judgement
Random sequence generation (selection bias)	Unclear risk	Only described the randomization used, but no description of the method and detail of randomization.
Allocation concealment (selection bias)	Unclear risk	No description.
Blinding (performance bias and detection bias) All outcomes	High risk	Participants and investigators were not blinded to acupuncture or pills.
Incomplete outcome data (attrition bias) All outcomes	Low risk	No attrition.
Selective reporting (reporting bias)	Low risk	Relevant outcome reported.
Other bias	Unclear risk	No description.