Auricular acupuncture with seed or pellet attachments for primary insomnia: a systematic review and meta-analysis

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Abstract

Background

Primary insomnia is a common health issue in the modern world. We conducted a systematic review of the auricular therapy, aiming to evaluate whether there are advantages of auricular acupuncture with seed or pellet attachments for the treatment of primary insomnia.

Methods

A search of relevant literatures was performed on major medical databases, including Medline, Embase, CENTRAL, CBM, CNKI, VIP, Wanfang Data and so on. Risk of bias evaluation, meta-analysis, sensitivity analysis and evidence rating of all extracted information were conducted also.

Results

A total of 1381 records were identified, with 15 studies deemed eligible for the present review. Meta-analyses were conducted in two comparisons separately: participants received auricular acupuncture were more likely to make an improvement in clinical effective rate (RR = 1.40, 95% CI 1.07 to 1.83), sleep duration (MD = 56.46, 95% CI 45.61 to 67.31), sleep efficiency(MD = 12.86, 95% CI 9.67 to 16.06), global score on PSQI (MD = -3.41, 95% CI -3.93 to -2.89), number of awakenings( MD = -3.27, 95% CI -6.30 to -0.25) and sleep onset latency(MD = -10.35, 95% CI -14.37 to -6.33) when compared to sham auricular acupuncture or placebo; while in auricular acupuncture VS medications comparison, a better effective rate (RR = 1.24, 95% CI 1.15 to 1.34), better sleep efficiency(MD = 21.44, 95% CI 16.30 to 26.58), lower PSQI score (MD = -3.62, 95% CI -4.59 to -2.65) and less adverse effect (RR = 0.11, 95% CI 0.04 to 0.26) can be seen also in auricular acupuncture group. Although these results suggested benefits of auricular acupuncture, the overall quality of evidence rated by the GRADE system was low.

Conclusion

Statistical analyses of the outcomes revealed a positive effect of auricular acupuncture for primary insomnia. Nonetheless, considering the poor methodological quality, insufficient sample size and possible publication bias, current evidence is not yet adequate to provide a strong support for the use of auricular acupuncture in the treatment of primary insomnia. More strictly designed clinical studies will be needed to obtain a more explicit conclusion.

Electronic supplementary material

The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12906-015-0606-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Related collections

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Author and article information

Contributors

Ying Lan: lanyingtcm@163.com

Xi Wu: wuxi403@126.com

Hui-Juan Tan: tanhj0607@gmail.com

Nan Wu: wunanwy@126.com

Jing-Jing Xing: 508959904@qq.com

Fu-Sheng Wu: emvie91@gmail.com

Lei-Xiao Zhang: 15156991@qq.com

Fan-Rong Liang: acuresearch@126.com

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): BMC Complement Altern Med

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): BMC Complement Altern Med

Title: BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine

Publisher: BioMed Central (London )

ISSN (Electronic): 1472-6882

Publication date (Electronic): 2 April 2015

Publication date PMC-release: 2 April 2015

Publication date Collection: 2015

Volume: 15

Electronic Location Identifier: 103

Affiliations

[ ]Acupuncture and Tuina School/Third Teaching Hospital, Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, No.37, Shierqiao Road, Jin Niu District, Chengdu, Sichuan 610075 China

[ ]VIP Ward of Acupuncture, First Teaching Hospital of Tianjin University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, No.314, An Shanxi Road, Nankai District, Tianjin, 300073 China

[ ]Sichuan 2nd Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, No.20, Sidao Street, Qing Yang District, Chengdu, Sichuan 610031 China

Article

Publisher ID: 606

DOI: 10.1186/s12906-015-0606-7

PMC ID: 4425871

PubMed ID: 25886561

SO-VID: 9ec3846d-661b-49a5-a48d-c72111def473

License:

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.