Cupping therapy for treating knee osteoarthritis: The evidence from systematic review and meta-analysis.

Objective: Cupping therapy is widely used in East Asia, the Middle East, or Central and North Europe to manage the symptom of knee osteoarthritis (KOA). The purpose of this systematic review was to evaluate the available evidence from randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of cupping therapy for treating patients with KOA.

Methods: The following databases were searched from their inception until January 2017: PubMed, Embase, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials and four Chinese databases [WanFang Med Database, Chinese BioMedical Database, Chinese WeiPu Database, and China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI)].