Abstract
Background Simple obesity has become a global risk to health of human beings. Acupuncture, as one of traditional Chinese medicine therapies, has been widely used in obesity treatment in recent years. However, the individual heterogeneity which makes acupuncture's efficiency unstable leads to some controversy. So more evidence-based results are necessary to judge the effectiveness of acupuncture in treatment of simple obesity. Compared with clinical trials, animal experiments are controllable, and the underlying mechanism is more likely to be explored. Last but not the least, more and more experimental studies on acupuncture for animal obesity have been published. Therefore, we conducted the systematic review and meta-analysis to evaluate the effectiveness of acupuncture in treating simple obesity in animal experiments. Methods Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) on acupuncture for simple obesity animal models were searched from six databases: PubMed, MEDLINE, CNKI, VIP, WanFang Date, and CMB from inception to February 2017 and updated on April 12, 2019. RevMan 5.3 software was used for meta-analysis. Treatment effects were summarized as relative risk (RR) and Standard mean difference (SMD) with 95% of confidence interval (CI). Results A total of 108 trials involving 5731 rats were included. Meta-analysis showed that acupuncture had better effect on reducing weight (SMD -2.60, 95%CI: -2.93 to -2.26, p<0.00001) and Lee's index (SMD -2.62, 95%CI:-3.18 to -2.06, p<0.00001) compared with control group. However, the methodological quality of included studies was generally poor. Details of blinding were not reported in most studies. In spite of high heterogeneity being observed on the merged data, sensitivity analysis using the leave-one-out approach, subgroup analysis based on different acupuncture techniques, and rat strains and meta-regression all failed to find the sources of heterogeneity. The asymmetric funnel plot suggested publication bias. Besides, adverse events were not reported in any reports. Conclusions Our review provided positive evidence of acupuncture for simple obesity. Unfortunately, none of the firm conclusions can be drawn due to methodological flaws, high heterogeneity, and publication bias. More high-quality trials are needed in future to get objective conclusions.
Highlights
Obesity, which is defined as being abnormal or excessive fat accumulation, accompanied with its complications, has been major risk for human health
Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) on acupuncture for simple obesity animal models were searched from six databases: PubMed, MEDLINE, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), vasoactive intestinal peptide (VIP), WanFang Date, and CMB from inception to February 2017 and updated on April 12, 2019
Treatment effects were summarized as relative risk (RR) and Standard mean difference (SMD) with 95% of confidence interval (CI)
Summary
Obesity, which is defined as being abnormal or excessive fat accumulation, accompanied with its complications, has been major risk for human health. The obesity which links to unhealthy lifestyles while having no other fundamental diseases, accounting for 95% of the obese, is the major risk factor for a number of chronic diseases, including diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and cancer [1,2,3]. In terms of this global public health problem, Western medicine treatment mainly embraces weight loss drugs and surgery. More evidence-based results are necessary to judge the effectiveness of acupuncture in treatment of simple obesity. We conducted the systematic review and meta-analysis to evaluate the effectiveness of acupuncture in treating simple obesity in animal experiments. More high-quality trials are needed in future to get objective conclusions
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