Acupuncture and Related Therapies for Endometriosis: A Network Meta-Analysis of Randomised Controlled Trials [Response to Letter]

We would like to express our gratitude to you for taking the time to provide a response to Zeng’s feedback on our article, “Acupuncture and Related Therapies for Endometriosis: A Network Meta-Analysis of Randomised Controlled Trials”. The insights they have shared are greatly appreciated and will contribute to the enhancement of our current research topic. Firstly, we would like to thank for their suggestions. Clinical staging is a key variable in the assessment of treatment efficacy. We further suggest that future clinical trials should refer to the endometriosis staging criteria developed by the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM), 1 where appropriate, to add components related to disease staging and to classify clinicopathological types according to the guidelines. 2 Secondly, we considered performing subgroup analyses during our analysis. However, the diversity of clinical analysis reports within the original literature made subgroup analysis infeasible. We agree that a stratified analysis based on acupuncture point selection could provide valuable insights into the efficacy of different acupuncture points for endometriosis and improve the quality of the manuscript. We will continue to monitor this area and conduct an updated network meta-analysis when the original literature is sufficient and meets the criteria for analysis. Furthermore, we extend our sincerest apologies for the error in Table 2. We once again appreciate your interest in our research and value your valuable feedback.