Letter: Letter to the Editor Regarding “Visualization Analysis of Acupuncture for the Treatment of Insomnia: A Scoping Literature Review Based on an International Database”

Dear Editor:

We have read the article by Sheng-nan Wang et al., ¹ “Visualization Analysis of Acupuncture for the Treatment of Insomnia: A Scoping Literature Review Based on an International Database,” which was recently published in Medical Acupuncture and offers valuable insights into research developments in this field. Nonetheless, certain conclusions presented in the study may lack reliability because of methodological limitations.

A primary concern lies in the search strategy used by Sheng-nan Wang et al., which appears insufficiently rigorous. To identify relevant literature, the authors relied on multiple overlapping free-text terms related to the treatment of insomnia and acupuncture. However, the omission of double quotation marks for exact phrase matching may have unnecessarily broadened the search, thereby including studies not directly pertinent to the research focus.

A literature search was conducted in Science Citation Index Expanded using the following terms: (TS=(“acupuncture”) OR TS=(“electroacupuncture”) OR TS=(“needle”) OR TS=(“warm acupuncture”) OR TS=(“fire needle”) OR TS=(“auricular needle”) OR TS=(“ear needle”) OR TS=(“skin needle”) OR TS=(“dry needle”) OR TS=(“scalp needle”) OR TS=(“warm needle”) OR TS=(“fire acupuncture”) OR TS=(“auricular acupuncture”) OR TS=(“skin acupuncture”) OR TS=(“scalp acupuncture”) OR TS=(“ear acupuncture”) OR TS=(“body acupuncture”) OR TS=(“acupuncture point”)) AND (TS=(“insomnia”) OR TS=(“sleeplessness”) OR TS=(“sleep initiation”) OR TS=(“maintenance disorders”) OR TS=(“disorders of initiating and maintaining sleep”) OR TS=(“primary insomnia”) OR TS=(“transient insomnia”) OR TS=(“secondary insomnia”) OR TS=(“insomnia disorder”) OR TS=(“sleep initiation dysfunction”) OR TS=(“quality of sleep”) OR TS=(“sleep complaint”) OR TS=(“sleep problem”) OR TS=(“sleep disturbance”) OR TS=(“sleep disorder”)). The search was conducted on August 23, 2025. The index date range was from January 1, 1900, to December 31, 2022. The search yielded 591 publications, with approximately one-third reported by original studies.

A further limitation concerns the study’s reliance solely on the Web of Science Core Collection. Although this database encompasses a wide range of high-quality English-language publications, the omission of other major databases (such as PubMed, Scopus, Embase, and CNKI), together with non-English literature, likely reduced the comprehensiveness of the search. As shown in the results section of the original text, literature production is mainly concentrated in China, accounting for 43.41% of the total research output. Therefore, it is necessary to search for relevant literature published in Chinese. As acupuncture, an integral component of traditional Chinese medicine, is extensively investigated in countries including China, Japan, and South Korea, the exclusion of these sources may have led to the underrepresentation of significant research and, consequently, a restricted global perspective.

Therefore, refinement of the bibliometric approach could provide a more precise and comprehensive depiction of research trends in acupuncture for the treatment of insomnia.

AUTHORS’ CONTRIBUTIONS

D.L. was responsible for drafting the article, while all authors contributed by reviewing and approving the final version.