Review Article A Systematic and Narrative Review of Acupuncture Point Application Therapies in the Treatment of Allergic Rhinitis and Asthma during Dog Days

Copyright © 2015 Cai-Yu-Zhu Wen et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Acupuncture point application therapies, including San-Fu-Tie and San-Fu-Jiu, have been widely employed to treat diseases with attacks inwinter during dog days inChina.The therapies combineChinese herbalmedicine and acupuncture pointswith the nature. However, the previous studies were reported to be unsystematic and incomplete. To develop a more comprehensive understanding of the effects of acupuncture point application therapies on allergic rhinitis and asthma, a systematic review of the literature up to 2015 was conducted. After filtering, eighteen randomized controlled trials (RCTs) involving 1,785 subjects were included. This systematic and narrative review shows that acupuncture point application therapies have been extensively applied in the treatment of allergic rhinitis and asthma with advantages of favorable treatment effect, convenient operation, receiving patients’ good acceptability and compliance, and few side effects. Meanwhile, the study elaborated the operating process of San-Fu-Tie and San-Fu-Jiu in detail. The review may provide a reference for clinical application in future. However, the efficacy, safety, an