Acupuncture and moxibustion therapies have greater therapeutic effectiveness for knee osteoarthritis than sham treatments and generic acupuncture/moxibustion treatments.
The researchers queried PubMed, Embase, and CNKI databases to find qualifying trials conducted between 2017 and 2022. All trials that employed acupuncture or moxibustion for knee osteoarthritis patients were included. The process of choosing studies to be included and extracting relevant data from them was carried out by two researchers independently. The data were analyzed using R 4.1.1.
The meta-analysis included seventeen trials. The results of the analysis identified a correlation between several common forms of acupuncture and moxibustion therapies, as observed via a network meta-analysis. The findings showed that treatments involving acupuncture or moxibustion were more effective than sham treatments. Furthermore, when compared with standard acupuncture or moxibustion procedures, specific acupuncture or moxibustion procedures proved to be more effective.
