Efficacy and safety of acupuncture for patients with chronic urticaria: study protocol of a randomized sham-controlled pilot trial

摘要

BackgroundChronic urticaria (CU) is a refractory skin disease with long duration and a high recurrence rate. Acupuncture has been widely used for the treatment of CU in clinical practice in China. However, until now, there has been no appropriately designed randomized controlled trial (RCT) to provide explicit evidence about the effectiveness of acupuncture for the treatment of CU worldwide. Therefore, we plan to conduct a pilot study to explore its effectiveness and safety and determine the feasibility of studying acupuncture in a future, full-scale, RCT of CU.