Claims that acupuncture is of little benefit in helping to rehabilitate stroke patients attracted controversy today.
A British expert says a series of studies of the treatment suggest it is not effective.
Professor Edzard Ernst, a complementary medicine specialist at the Peninsula Medical School, Devon, UK, studied ten pieces of research which included some 700 patients.
He worked with South Korean analysts on the study, reported in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.
They say that only two of the ten studies showed evidence that acupuncture works – but claim they were "highly biased".
However Chinese experts reject the findings in the same journal.
Dr Hongmei Wu, of West China Hospital, Sichuan University in Chengdu, China, says the study has "several weaknesses".
She says it is important for researchers to guarantee the quality of the acupuncture used in their research – and points out the numbers of patients are small.
She writes: "The negative effects of true acupuncture for stroke recovery based on the systematic review of sham-controlled trials by Jae Cheol Kong and colleagues should be interpreted cautiously."
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