Efficacy and safety of acupuncture in treating acute low back pain: a systematic review and bayesian network meta-analysis

Background: Acute low back pain (ALBP) is common and acupuncture therapy is a treatment option. The comparative efficacy and safety of different acupuncture therapies are still unclear. The aim of this network meta-analysis (NMA) was to evaluate and compare the efficacy and safety of different acupuncture therapies for ALBP. Methods: We performed a systematic search in PubMed, Cochrane Library, Embase, Web of Science, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), VIP Database, Wanfang Database, and Chinese Biomedical Database (CBM). The outcome indicators measured were visual analog scale (VAS) score, lumbar range of motion (ROM) score, and adverse events. The risk of bias among included studies was assessed with the Cochrane risk-of-bias tool. WinBUGS 1.4 was used for the NMA. Results: In total, nineteen randomized controlled trials (RCTs) comprising 1,427 participants were included. Results of NMA showed the following: (I) compared with placebo, motion style acupuncture (MSA) (SMD: -2.21; 95% CI, -3.33 to -1.08), manual acupuncture (MA) (SMD: -1.14; 95% CI, -2.01 to -0.27), and electroacupuncture (EA) (SMD: -1.57; 95% CI, -2.98 to -0.15) were found to be more effective for decreasing VAS score; (II) compared with pharmacotherapy, MSA (SMD: -1.00; 95% CI, -1.47 to -0.54) and MA (SMD: -0.60; 95% CI, -1.15 to -0.05) were found to be more effective in reducing ROM score. Results of the surface under the cumulative ranking curve indicated that all acupuncture types were superior to placebo or pharmacotherapy in lowering VAS and ROM score. It was noted that MSA was the most effective treatment. Conclusions: This study indicated that acupuncture therapy achieved good therapeutic effects in the treatment of ALBP, especially MSA therapy. Nevertheless, due to the low quality of the included trials, the credibility of our conclusions is low. Further well-designed RCTs with high quality and large samples are still needed to evaluate the efficacy and safety of acupuncture therapy for ALBP.

Automated summary

This study conducted a network meta-analysis to evaluate and compare the efficacy and safety of different acupuncture therapies for acute low back pain (ALBP). The results showed that acupuncture therapy, especially motion style acupuncture (MSA), achieved good therapeutic effects in treating ALBP. However, due to the low quality of included studies, further well-designed randomized controlled trials with larger samples are needed to confirm these findings.