Improvement of Acupuncture Therapy on Relapse of P atients with G outy A rthritis: A Pairwise and Bayesian Network Meta analysis

Abstract

Objective: The aim of this study is to investigate the impact of acupuncturetherapy on relapse of patients with gouty arthritis (GA). Methods: “gout ORgouty arthritis” AND “a cupuncture therapy OR acupuncture OR moxibustionOR electroacupuncture OR fire needle OR acupotomology OR blood lettingpuncture OR plum blossom needle” were used as search strategies forsearching related studies. Twenty two studies involving 2394 patient s wereenrolled in this research through the analysis of databases of CNKI, Wanfang,VIP, PubMed, Embase and Cochrane Library. Results: The results of pairwise metaanalysis and network meta analysis (NMA) indicated that patients withacupuncture therapy had a significantly lower relapse rate (RR) compared withthose without acupuncture therapy (OR = 0.21, 95% CI: 0.16 0.26, P <0.00001); the follow up time (TFU) and serum urate concentration (SUA)before treatment had no significant effect on the reductio n of RR caused byacupuncture therapy (P > 0.05); and patients treated with acupuncture plusWestern medicine (WM) had the lowest RR (surface under the cumulativeranking [SUCRA] = 85.0%), followed by acupuncture plus traditional Chinesemedicine (TCM, SUC RA = 73.5%), acupuncture only (SUCRA = 72.8%),fourthly acupuncture plus TCM and WM (SUCRA = 33.0%), then TCM(SUCRA = 28.7%), finally WM (SUCRA = 7.0%). Conclusion: Our findingmay facilitate the application of acupuncture therapy in patients with GA. Ourresearch also offered some information for the future research.