The existing studies offer fairly limited and low-quality evidence about the effectiveness of acupuncture for postpartum depression treatment.
[[Methodology]]
Researchers identified systematic reviews and meta-analyses on the use of acupuncture for treating postpartum depression from digital databases' establishment to November 2021. They applied the Assessing the Methodological Quality of Systematic Reviews 2, an instrument used to evaluate the methodological quality of reviews and analyses included in the study. The researchers then used the Grades of Recommendations, Assessment, Development and Evaluation to evaluate the quality of evidence for the outcomes of interest.
Six studies that conducted quantitative syntheses were included in the analysis. Based on the quality assessment, all these reviews and analyses were found to have critically low methodological quality, primarily due to limitations with respect to certain criteria. Furthermore, none of the studies included high-quality evidence, and the majority offered low-quality evidence on the effectiveness of acupuncture in treating postpartum depression. Notably, the researchers observed inconsistent findings across the studies.
