• Wei Huang, Xia Chen, Yanji Zhang, Lihua Wang, Jiajie Wang, Yingrong Zhang, Dan Wei, and Zhongyu Zhou.
• Hubei University of Chinese Medicine/The Co-innovation Center for Preventive Treatment of Disease of Acupuncture-moxibustion in Hubei Province.
• Medicine (Baltimore). 2020 Dec 18; 99 (51): e23728e23728.

BackgroundObesity is a chronic metabolic disease in which patients are overweight due to the excessive accumulation of fat in the body. As a subtype of acupuncture, catgut embedding at acupoints has increased in clinical application for obesity. The aim of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness and safety of acupoint catgut embedding therapy for simple obesity.Methods And AnalysisElectronic searches of the Cochrane Library, PubMed, Springer Medline, EMBASE, Web of Science, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), Wan-Fang Data (WANFANG), Chinese Biomedical Literature Database (CBM), and Chinese Scientific Journal Database (VIP databases) will be performed. The Chinese Clinical Trial Registry Center and the ClinicalTrials.gov registry will also be searched for ongoing trials. Databases will be searched from inception to August 2020.Randomized controlled clinical trials (RCTs) will be included if acupoint catgut embedding was evaluated as the sole treatment (diet or exercise therapy as the control group will be allowed) for simple obesity. The primary outcomes will consist of the improvement rate and reduction in body weight (BW). The secondary outcomes will include body mass index (BMI), waist circumference (WC), fat percentage (F %) and adverse effects. Two reviewers will undertake the study selection, data extraction and assessments of study quality. After screening the studies, the quality of the included studies will be assessed according to the quality criteria specified by the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions (version 5.1.0). Meta-analysis will be performed by RevMan 5.3 software.ResultsAccording to the data of improvement rate and reduction in BW, BMI, WC, and F %, this study will provide an evidence-based review of acupoint catgut embedding therapy for simply.ConclusionsThis systematic review will present the current evidence for acupoint catgut embedding therapy for obesity.Ethics And DisseminationEthical approval is not necessary since this protocol is only for systematic review and does not involve privacy data. The findings of this study will be disseminated electronically through a peer-review publication or presented at a relevant conference.Trial Registration NumberINPLASY2020110045.Copyright © 2020 the Author(s). Published by Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc.

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