Effect and safety of stimulating acupoints in children with cough variant asthma: A Meta-analysis

Jin Yutong, Chen Shan, Xuan Lihua · Journal of Traditional Chinese Medicine · 2018 August

Objective

To evaluate the efficacy and safety of stimulating acupoints in subjects with childhood cough variant asthma (CVA).

Conclusions

This article indicated that stimulating acupressure points is effective in reducing CVA symptoms. Children reported to have reduced inflammation in lungs and cough frequency.

Critical Appraisal

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Insights

Stimulating acupoints had positive effects on childhood cough variant asthma and was a relatively safe treatment.

In the study, we found out that the therapeutic effect of stimulating-acupoint group was much better than that of control group in the treatment of childhood cough variant asthma, and the difference was statistically significant. A major strength of our review was that our meta-analysis of 13 studies involving 1,112 participants, the enlarged sample size and accumulating evidence provided more reliable estimates. Furthermore, the original trails included in our study were all prospective, which reduced the selection bias and likelihood of recall bias. The results indicate that stimulating acupoints has a positive effect on cough variant asthma in children, leading to the decreased recurrence rate and cough duration as well as the reducing of eosinophils and IgE. However, the poor methodological quality of the trials lack of persuasiveness, so high quality RCTs with more useful indicators are needed in the future studies.