Leonardo Gomes Braga Ferreira
Diabetic peripheral neuropathy (DPN) is one of the most prevalent and debilitating microvascular complications of diabetes mellitus. While conventional pharmacological management offers partial symptomatic relief, it is frequently limited by adverse effects and fails to alter the underlying pathophysiology. Recently, numerous systematic reviews and meta-analyses have investigated acupuncture as an adjunctive therapy for DPN, generating conflicting conclusions due to methodological heterogeneity. The objective of this Umbrella Review is to systematically synthesize and critically appraise this secondary evidence to provide a robust, hierarchically stratified, and pathophysiologically guided prescription paradigm for the use of needling therapies in DPN.