Reading a protocol

Each result on AcuiQ is one entry: a set of points that a named source used for a complaint, with how the source delivered them and where it was published. An entry records what the source wrote, and most of its fields can be empty, because many sources leave things out. This page goes through a result card field by field, saying what each one records and what it cannot tell you. How results are ranked, and what the percentage on a card means, are in How AcuiQ is built; the limits of the index as a whole are in What AcuiQ does not do.

The heading and the points

A card headed “Protocol (4 points)” holds a prescription of four points that a source used together. A card headed “Single-point entry” holds one point, because its source named one; a single point indicated for a complaint is not a prescription anyone recorded giving, and the index lists every multi-point entry above it. Under the heading, the full prescription runs on one line, each code linked to its point page, and below that the points appear one at a time with a diagram and the catalogue’s location. The code is the catalogue’s, which differs from the WHO’s for a few channels, as Reading a point code sets out, and the written location uses the units described in Measuring in cun.

The point list tells you which points the source used. It does not tell you whether the points were used on one side or both, how deep the needles went, how long they stayed in, or whether the practitioner sought de qi, the needle sensation; the entry does not record those.

The symptom tags

The tags under the codes are the terms the entry is filed under. They come from the source, so they can be a symptom (insomnia), a condition (knee osteoarthritis) or a pattern the source diagnosed before choosing points, such as constipation from heat. A pattern tag means the source prescribed for that pattern, and the bare complaint’s page can list it beside entries for other patterns; Patterns, symptoms and what you can look up explains why both kinds of term are in the index.

The evidence kind

A badge near the foot of the card names one of four kinds: study-reported, text or case report, website, or unsourced. AcuiQ works the kind out from the reference itself and stores no judgement of its own. An entry is study-reported when its reference is a DOI or a PubMed, PubMed Central or Europe PMC link, so the paper behind it can be opened and checked. A text or case report entry cites a clinical text, a compiled set of prescriptions or a case report by name, often a Chinese-language record without an open link. A website entry links to a site that is not peer-reviewed.

The kind tells you how far you can check the source. It does not tell you what sort of study the source was. A study-reported entry can come from a randomised trial, a case series or a review, from a trial of 30 people or of 3,000, and from a trial with a sham control or none. Nor does the kind say what the trial found compared with its control. The database also keeps a credibility score from 1 to 5 for each entry, which the card does not show: it has no published rubric and is flat across whole classes of source, and printing it as a grade would assert a grading that does not exist. The kind is shown instead because anyone can check it against the reference.

How the points were delivered

The line under the badge says how the source applied the points and on what schedule, when the source says. Two entries for breech presentation read “Moxibustion · 14 sessions over 2 weeks” and “Needling + Moxibustion”. The line has three parts, and any of them can be missing.

• Modality, the kind of stimulus, from a fixed list of twelve below. An entry can carry more than one, joined with a plus sign.
• Sessions, the number of treatments the source gave.
• Course length, the calendar span of the treatment, written in weeks when it runs to a whole number of weeks from two upwards, otherwise in days. With no session count, the line reads “a 4-week course” or “a single day”.

The modality matters because the same point can be used in different ways. The AcuiQ entries for breech presentation include moxibustion at BL67 (Zhiyin), where the stimulus is heat from burning moxa and no needle is used. Until September 2026 the index recorded no modality, and such an entry read as a needle prescription. The index also kept a single duration field that held days for one paper and session counts for the next; sessions and course length replaced it, so the two numbers now mean one thing each.

A 2013 individual patient data meta-analysis by MacPherson and colleagues of 29 chronic pain trials and 17,922 patients tested whether features like these changed the result. Compared with sham controls, it found little evidence that the style of acupuncture, the number or placement of needles, or the number, frequency or length of sessions modified the effect on pain. Compared with controls that had no acupuncture, more needles and, in five trials with patient-level data, more sessions went with better pain outcomes. The authors noted that differences in control groups and sample sizes between trials could account for some of that. A course line therefore records what one study gave, not a dose any study established.

Sex and age

An entry can record the sex and the age of the people its source treated, and many record neither. The card does not print them. They act on the search on AcuiQ’s home page, which takes an age and a sex as optional filters: an entry is dropped only when it states a different sex, or states an age more than 20 years from the one entered. An entry that records neither stays in every filtered search, so a filter narrows the list without guaranteeing that what remains was studied in people of that age or sex.

The age is a single number, which is the wrong shape for most studies. Some entries carry an age that the extraction spread across the range a paper reported, one entry per step, rather than an age any patient had; a fractional age is the sign of one. Treat a recorded age as a rough cohort marker, and read the paper for the real range.

The citation

Below the course line, the card states what the entry is, in one sentence, and gives the source. A study-reported entry shows its DOI, as doi:10.…, or the host of its link, and opens the paper. A text entry shows the book or record it came from by name; short codes the extraction used, such as a sigil for a point manual, are always expanded into the title. An unsourced entry says that no source was recorded. The citation is the field to check everything else against: if the points, the course or the tags on a card disagree with the paper, the paper is right and the entry is a bug; the corrections address is at the foot of How AcuiQ is built.

One paper can stand behind several cards. A study that gave different formulas at different stages, or that AcuiQ split by patient group, appears once per prescription, so five cards with the same DOI are one source, not five. Two Thirds of It Rests on One Source counts how often a condition’s entries trace back to a single reference.

The line about other studies

A card can close with a line comparing its points with the other study-reported entries for the same search. AcuiQ leaves out any entry that cites the card’s own reference, finds the study that shares the most points with the card, and names those points and that study. On a study-reported card the line reads “Corroborated by a second study”, or “Not corroborated” when no other study in the index uses any of the card’s points for that search. On any other card it reads “Substantiated by a study” or “Not substantiated”. When no study besides the card’s own covers the search, the line is absent.

A shared point is not a shared prescription: the other study chose some of the same points and did not test the card’s combination, which the line states on every card that carries it. The index also matches studies by reference, so two references can be two papers from one research group, and a study-reported card says that too.

On the symptom page

A symptom page adds two summaries above and below the cards. “Points cited for” counts how often each point appears across the entries ranked highest for that symptom; the page calls it citation frequency, not a recommendation. “How the studies delivered it” counts the modalities, sessions and course lengths of the study-reported entries once per study rather than once per entry, so a paper split into many entries counts once. That summary gives the median, the middle value, and the middle half, the range covering the central half of the studies that gave a figure.

What a protocol entry cannot tell you

The STRICTA reporting guideline, published in 2010 by Hugh MacPherson and colleagues as an extension of the CONSORT statement for trials, lists what a report of an acupuncture trial should say about the treatment: 6 items and 17 sub-items, from the style of acupuncture and the reasoning behind the points, through the number of needles, depth, the response sought, stimulation and retention time, to the number and frequency of sessions, the practitioner’s background and the control. An AcuiQ entry carries the points, the kind of stimulus, and the number and span of sessions. The rest stays in the paper, and papers often leave it out: a 2020 review by Fernández-Jané and colleagues of 28 trials of acupuncture for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease found only 4 of 16 STRICTA sub-items reported adequately in more than 70 in 100 trials.

An entry also does not say what the treated group was compared with. A 2018 update of the Acupuncture Trialists’ Collaboration meta-analysis, covering 39 trials and 20,827 patients with chronic pain, found no clear association between trial results and the characteristics of the acupuncture given, while effect sizes did vary with the kind of control: they were smaller against penetrating sham needles and against control arms that received a lot of treatment. Sham acupuncture and Reading an acupuncture trial cover the controls, and Nothing in This Literature Ever Fails covers how often published trials in this field report a positive result. An entry is a pointer to its citation, and the judgement about what to do with it stays with a practitioner.