Efficacy and Safety of Electroacupuncture for Pain Control in Herpes Zoster: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

He K, Ni F, Huang Y, Zheng M, Yu H, Han D, Ma R · Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine · 2022 July 04

DOI 10.1155/2022/4478444

Objective

To investigate the efficacy and safety of electroacupuncture (EA) for acute pain control in herpetic neuralgia patients through a systematic review and meta-analysis.

Conclusions

EA was found to be superior to control treatment in terms of visual analog scale, time to rash healing, and incidence of postherpetic neuralgia. Subgroup analyses showed that 2/100?Hz-EA was more effective, but no significant differences were observed in the time to cessation of pustules, scabs, and adverse reactions. However, publication bias was noted, and weak evidence was found for the safety of EA.

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Insights

Electroacupuncture offers superior results than control treatment for acute herpes zoster pain and rash healing time.

The chosen method for this study was a systematic review and meta-analysis of previously published research. The research team conducted a comprehensive search across multiple databases in both English and Chinese languages, seeking out randomized controlled trials relevant to the application of Electroacupuncture for acute herpes zoster pain. The explicit criteria were set for investigation and the Cochrane Risk of Bias Tool deployed to evaluate the methodological quality of the chosen studies. The key outcome indexes included visual analog scale, rash healing time, time to cessation of pustules, time to scabs, adverse reactions, and the occurrence of postherpetic neuralgia and specific subgroup and sensitivity analyses were performed to pinpoint the intervention's effect. The data extracted from six selected randomized controlled trials (341 participants in total) indicates that Electroacupuncture demonstrates an observable improvement in treatment of acute herpes zoster pain and reduction in rash healing time when compared to the control group. However, no significant difference was noticed in relation to time to cessation of pustules, scabs, and adverse reactions. The use of 2/100 Hz-EA specifically seemed to have more substantial effects on herpes zoster pain. Though the study results were found to be stable, an observed publication bias and weak evidence for the safety of Electroacupuncture dilutes the overall conclusion.