The Effectiveness of Acupuncture for Treating Erectile Dysfunction: A Systematic Review of Clinical Trials

Erectile dysfunction (ED) is a common sexual dysfunction, which affects the quality of life in couples. The use of acupressure for treating ED has been reported in various studies. This systematic review was performed to evaluate the current evidence for the efficacy and safety of acupuncture in treating ED.

In this systematic review, electronic databases of SID, IranMedex, Magiran, IranDoc, Scopus, PubMed, Cochrane, and Google Scholar were searched up to November, 2017 to identify all the studies reporting the effect of acupuncture for treating ED. The search was performed using the keywords of “acupuncture”, “electro-acupuncture”, “intradermal needling”, “erectile dysfunction”, “impotence”, and “male sexual dysfunction”. The quality of the included studies was assessed using the Jadad scale. The results were reported qualitatively.

Among 1274 articles retrieved in the initial search, five clinical trials (228 participants) were selected for this systematic review. The studies were conducted in Austria, China, the Netherlands, and Turkey. Most studies showed the beneficial effects of acupuncture for treating ED. Some studies investigated the possible side effects of acupressure and reported no serious adverse effects in this regard.

Acupuncture for treating ED can be an effective method, but due to the poor methodological quality in the majority of trials, more high-quality studies with larger sample sizes are needed to confirm these findings