Clariant opens new catalysts office in China

Abstract

Massage therapy (MT), as one of the most popular forms of CAM therapies, has been widely accepted by families with children. This systematic review and meta-analysis included randomized controlled trials (RCTs) which evaluated the effects of MT on pulmonary functions of pediatric asthma.Eight English and Chinese databases were searched for relevant RCTs published from their inception to May, 2015.We included eligible RCTs in which MT was employed either alone or as an adjuvant treatment for standard asthma medical therapy in children with asthma. Forced Vital Capacity (FVC), Forced Expiratory Flow in first second (FEV1) and FEV1/FVC were used as important outcomes in this research. The selection of studies, data extraction, and validation was performed independently by two reviewers. Cochrane risk of bias criteria was used for evaluating the quality of the included studies.Three RCTs were included in the final meta-analysis. The meta-analysis showed that, compared with standard asthma medical therapy alone, MT plus standard asthma medical therapy had favorable effects in improving the FEV1 [MD = 0.07, 95% CI (0.01,0.13), p = 0.02; heterogeneity: Chi2 = 1.02, p = 0.60, I2 = 0%] and FEV1/FVC [MD = 0.06, 95% CI (0.01,0.12), p = 0.03; heterogeneity: Chi2 = 1.52, p = 0.47, I2 = 0%]; however, it failed to do so on FVC. In addition, we conducted a qualitative review of two styles of massage therapies here. Changes in FVC were measured in two styles of massage therapies, with inconsistent effects. However, there were consistent increases in FEV1, though one study which used classical manual massage reported improvements were not statistically significant. In addition, the similar results were also found in the FEV1/FVC measurement.Only weak evidence supports the notion that MT has a beneficial effect on pulmonary functions of pediatric asthma.