Efficacy and Safety of Scalp Acupuncture for Insomnia: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
Fu-gui Liu, Ai-hua Tan, Chao-qun Peng, Yun-xia Tan, Ming-chao Yao · Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine · 2021 May 24
DOI 10.1155/2021/6621993
Objective
To systematically evaluate the efficacy and safety of scalp acupuncture in the treatment of insomnia.
Conclusions
Scalp acupuncture is effective and safe in the treatment of insomnia, which is worthy of clinical application. However, due to the limited number of included literature, the methodology of some studies is slightly low and the quality of literature is slightly poor. In the future, we need to design rigorous, large sample, multiple center randomized controlled study to further verify the conclusion of this study.
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Insights
The comprehensive evaluation results show that scalp acupuncture is effective in treating insomnia.
A total of 21 studies were included in this study, and a total of 1606 cases were included. The comprehensive evaluation results show that scalp acupuncture is effective in treating insomnia. Compared with the control group, scalp acupuncture can significantly improve the effective rate of treating insomnia. The PSQI score subgroup analysis showed that the PSQI score of the head was significantly better than that of the drug and blank group, but there was no significant difference from other acupuncture methods. Sensitivity analysis showed that scalp acupuncture ameliorates the PSQI score better, but excluding any item had high heterogeneity. Meta regression analysis of PSQI score according to different intervention measures in the control group showed that the difference of intervention measures in the control group was the source of heterogeneity. In terms of adverse events, the scalp acupuncture group had no adverse events, which was significantly better than the control group. Based on this study, we found that scalp acupuncture is effective and safe in the treatment of insomnia.
