The Efficacy of Wet Cupping on Blood Pressure among Hypertension Patients in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia: A Randomised Controlled Trial Pilot Study

Abstract

Cupping is an ancient remedy that is known in many parts of the world. Wet cupping in specific is more popular in the Arab region, since was a recommended treatment in Islam. Despite of that, it still needs more research to prove its efficacy on many diseases, and hypertension is one of them. The objectives of this study are to determine the efficacy of wet cupping on high blood pressure among hypertension patients. Also, to assess the incidence of wet cupping side effects in the intervention group. This pilot study is a two-armed randomised controlled trial with 10 participants assigned to the intervention group and 8 in the control group. The intervention group were high blood pressure patients who performed 3 sessions of wet cupping in addition to their usual anti-hypertension management, and the control group were high blood pressure patients who received their usual anti-hypertension management only. The results after 4 weeks of follow up showed no significant difference between the intervention and control group in both the mean difference of systolic and diastolic blood pressure. There were no serious side effects of wet cupping in this study. In conclusion, wet cupping therapy was found to be efficient in reducing blood pressure in previous similar studies, but this finding was not shown in this study maybe because of the small sample size, since this is a pilot study. More research is still recommended in that area.