Abstract
BackgroundLung cancer is the leading cause of death in cancer patients. Clinical studies showed that a variety of acupoint stimulations have been extensively used for lung cancer patients, including needle insertion, injection with herbal extraction, plaster application, and moxibustion. However, the role of acupoint stimulation in lung cancer treatment was not fully reviewed.MethodsIn the present study, we conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis on the role of acupoint stimulation in lung cancer treatment by electronic and manual searching in seven databases, including Ovid (Ovid MEDLINE, AMED, CAB s, EMBASE), EBSCOhost research databases (Academic Search premier, MEDLINE, CIHAHL Plus), PreQuest (British Nursing Index, ProQuest Medical Library, ProQuest Dissertations & Theses A&I, PsycINFO), and ISI web of knowledge (Web of Science, BIOSIS Citation Index, Biological s, Chinese Science Citation Database), CNKI, Wanfang Data, and CQVIP.ResultsOur study showed that acupoint stimulation has strong immunomodulatory effect for lung cancer patients as demonstrated by the significant increase of IL-2, T cell subtypes (CD3+ and CD4+, but not CD8+ cells), and natural killer cells. Further analysis revealed that acupoint stimulation remarkably alleviates the conventional therapy-induced bone marrow suppression (hemoglobin, platelet, and WBC reduction) in lung cancer patients, as well as decreases nausea and vomiting. The pooled studies also showed that acupoint stimulation can improve Karnofsky performance status, immediate tumor response, quality of life (EORCT-QLQ-C30), and pain control of cancer patients.ConclusionsAcupoint stimulation is found to be effective in lung cancer treatment, further confirmatory evaluation via large scale randomized trials is warranted.
Highlights
Lung cancer is the leading cause of death in cancer patients
Acupuncture has been widely used for more than three thousand years in China. It is one of the key treatment modalities in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), which is based on the Yin-Yang, Channel and Collateral Theories
We have previously found that Chinese herbal medicine, as an adjunct therapy, has advantage in the reduction of side effects and improvement of symptoms in patients with non-small cell lung carcinoma [16]
Summary
Lung cancer is the leading cause of death in cancer patients. Acupuncture has been widely used for more than three thousand years in China It is one of the key treatment modalities in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), which is based on the Yin-Yang, Channel and Collateral Theories. Lung cancer is a leading cause of cancer mortality with 1.37 million deaths in 2008 worldwide. It is the most prevalent cancer in male and the fourth prevalent cancer in female. Some clinical studies have reported the use of acupoint stimulation as a treatment for lung cancer [17,18]. We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis on the efficacy of acupoint stimulation for lung cancer patients in the present study
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