Fig. 4

a and b MASS De Qi difference among trial sites for the acupuncture group a and the mock laser group b individually. The box plots demonstrate comparison of the MASS De Qi median scores between the four trial sites for both the acupuncture group (HK = 22, AUS = 24, CHA = 24, ITY = 24) and the mock laser group (HK = 26, AUS = 24, ITY = 24). One trial site (China) did not collect data for the mock laser group. Bonferroni correction for multiple comparisons was used. Pairwise comparison demonstrated statistically significant differences in the MDI scores across different trial sites (Kruskal-Wallis Rank Sum test, * p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001; 2-tailed). Extreme values and outliers lied beyond the whiskers and denoted differently with a star and a circle respectively