Abstract:Objective To evaluate the clinical efficacy of massage in the treatment of type 2 diabetes mellitus, and to provide reference for the clinical practice of type 2 diabetes mellitus. Methods CNKI, WanFang, VIP,PubMed and other databases were searched by computer. All the retrieval time was up to November 2016. According to the inclusion and exclusion criteria, two reviewers independently screened the literature and provided the data,and evaluated the quality of the included literature. RevMan 5.0 software was used for meta-analysis. Results Eight randomized controlled trials involving 998 patients were included into the study. The results of meta-analysis showed that the total effective rate and markedly effective rate of massage combined with conventional drug therapy in treating type 2 diabetes mellitus (observation group) were higher than those of the conventional drug treatment group (control group), and the inefficiency was lower than that of the control group (P < 0.05). There was no significant difference in the effective rate or the improved rate between the observation group and the control group (P > 0.05). Conclusions The treatment of type 2 diabetes by massage is safe and effective, but the quantity of the literature is relatively small and the quality is fairly low. Therefore, large sample and high quality randomized controlled trials are needed to confirm its effectiveness.