AIM: Acupuncture could accelerate the local blood circulation of knee, increase tissue metabolic rate, improve the blood stasis of affected knee, and promote inflammation absorption, finally relieve clinical symptoms of patients with osteoarthritis of knee joint. In this study, the procedure, mechanism, curative effect and evaluation criterion of acupuncture and moxibustion for knee osteoarthritis in recent 5 years were investigated. METHODS: CHKD full text database was seariched for Chinese articles about acupuncture for osteoarthritis dated from January 2002 to December 2006 with the keywords of "acupuncture and moxibustion, knee osteoarthritis, treatment, explore". The articles including control group and treatment group were selected to look up the full texts, and the non-randomized studies were excluded. Inclusive criteria: (1) related articles published between January 2002 and December 2006; (2) randomized controlled research; (3) classified by quantity of treatment; (4) conservative treatment first. Exclusive criteria; (1) repetitive studies; (2) untypical case report. Totally 102 randomized and non-randomized articles on treatment of osteoarthritis with acupuncture, moxibustion, electroacupuncture, traditional Chinese herbs for external and internal use, and massage were collected, and 37 clinical case reports met the inclusive criteria. Sixty-five empirical and duplicated studies or no control group were excluded. RESULTS: The clinical reports about the treatment of osteoarthritis with acupuncture suggest that acupuncture therapy is simple with precise curative effect and most of the acupoints are located at knee or below. Among the various therapies, acupuncture with warmed needle or electricity are used a lot, assisted with massage, traditional Chinese herbs to enhance the curative effect. The control group is set up to compare the curative effect with treatment group, This is an obvious difference in present articles from former ones. However, the evaluation criteria for clinical effect are still uncertain. only few evaluations on the clinical symptoms. signs, ability of daily life, or those with pain score scale and osteoarthritis sacle. It is necessary to establish uniform and objective criteria, which are conducive to the screening of treatment and improvement of curative effect. In addition, there are few reports about the research of acupuncture for treatment of knee osteoarthritis. CONCLUSION: Many conservative treatments such as acupuncture and moxibustion could be utilized to cure knee osteoarthritis and have received certain effect. However, unified standard to evaluate curative effect should be established and experimental work should be reinforced.

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