Acupoint Injection for Alleviating Side Effects of Chemotherapy in People with Cancer: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
Yulan Yang, Hairong Su, Jian Wen, Jianyun Hong
Abstract
Objective. This study aimed to investigate the efficacy of acupoint injection for alleviating side effects of chemotherapy in people with cancer. Methods. PubMed, EMBASE, Cochrane library databases, CNKI, VIP, WanFang Date, and CBM were searched for randomized controlled trials (RCTs) from inception through December 28, 2020. This meta-analysis was performed using Review Manager 5.3. Results. A total of 8 RCTs including 557 participants were eligible and included in the meta-analysis. The selected RCTs studied acupoint injection for alleviating side effects of chemotherapy in people with cancer. Statistically significant improvements were observed for the incidence of nausea and vomiting (RR = 0.39; 95% CI 0.26, 0.58; <a:math xmlns:a="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" id="M1"> <a:mi>P</a:mi> </a:math> < 0.00001), the number of leukocyte (MD = 1.89; 95%CI 0.74, 3.03; <c:math xmlns:c="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" id="M2"> <c:mi>P</c:mi> </c:math> = 0.001), and the number of platelet (MD = 28.82; 95%CI 19.33, 38.30; <e:math xmlns:e="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" id="M3"> <e:mi>P</e:mi> </e:math> < 0.00001). Two of these studies suggested that acupoint injection can also reduce some other adverse reactions, which showed a statistical difference (RR = 0.29; 95% CI 0.11, 0.75; <g:math xmlns:g="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" id="M4"> <g:mi>P</g:mi> </g:math> = 0.01). Conclusion. The analysis indicated that acupoint injection can alleviate side effects of chemotherapy in people with cancer. However, due to the high risk of bias and small sample size in the included studies, the results need to be further confirmed by further large, rigorously designed trials.