Accepted for/Published in: Interactive Journal of Medical Research
Date Submitted: Apr 26, 2025
Open Peer Review Period: May 6, 2025 - Jul 1, 2025
Date Accepted: Jul 15, 2025
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Acupuncture and Moxibustion for Post-Stroke Depression: An overview of systematic reviews
ABSTRACT
Background:
Post-stroke depression (PSD) is a prevalent complication that arises after a stroke. In recent years, a number of systematic reviews have been published on the use of moxibustion and acupuncture for PSD, however, the results have not been entirely consistent.
Objective:
We conducted a systematic review to assess the quality of the evidence, reporting, and methodology of systematic reviews on acupuncture and moxibustion for PSD.
Methods:
Systematic reviews of acupuncture and moxibustion for PSD published before August 10, 2024 were searched in eight databases: PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, Web of Science, and CNKI, Wanfang, VIP, CBM. The systematic reviews and meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials comparing moxibustion and acupuncture for curing PSD were included. The methodological quality, reporting quality, and evidence quality were assessed using AMSTAR 2, PRISMA 2020, and GRADE, in that order.
Results:
There were a total of 24 studies included. According to AMSTAR 2's results, the methodological quality of all studies are "low" or "critically low". According to PRISMA 2020, one study had seriously inadequate reporting quality, and 21 studies had somewhat inadequate reporting quality. And the included literature had a range of quality of evidence from very low to moderate.
Conclusions:
The majority of the included systematic reviews interpreted the findings to suggest that acupuncture is beneficial for PSD. However, systematic reviews' methodological, reporting, and evidence quality should be improved. More robust evidence requires larger, multicenter, thoroughly conducted randomized controlled trials as well as high-quality systematic reviews. Clinical Trial: CRD42024576753
Citation
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Copyright
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