BackgroundThe purpose of this systematic review is to assess the effectiveness of acupuncture for angina pectoris.MethodsEleven electronic databases were searched until January 2013. The study included randomized controlled trials that the effectiveness of acupuncture alone was compared to anti-angina medicines (in addition to conventional treatment) and the effectiveness of a combination of acupuncture plus anti-angina medicines was compared to anti-angina medicines alone. The trial selection, data extraction, quality assessment and data analytic procedures outlined in the 2011 Cochrane Handbook were involved.ResultsThe study included 25 randomized controlled trials (involving 2,058 patients) that met our inclusion criteria. The pooled results showed that the number of patients with ineffectiveness of angina relief was less in the combined acupuncture-anti-angina treatment group than in the anti-angina medicines alone group (RR 0.33, 95% CI 0.23-0.47, p < 0.00001, I2 = 0%). Similarly, compared to the anti-angina medicines alone group, fewer patients in the combined treatment group showed no ECG improvement (RR 0.50, 95% CI 0.40-0.62, p < 0.00001, I2 = 0%). However, no differences were observed between acupuncture treatment alone and anti-angina medicines alone for both outcome measures. Only four trials mentioned adverse effects. One trial found no significant difference between acupuncture and Chinese medicine, and three reported no adverse events. The quality of the trials was found to be low.ConclusionsThe findings showed very low evidence to support the use of acupuncture for improving angina symptoms and ECG of angina patients. However, the quality of the trials included in this study was low. Large and rigorously designed trials are needed to confirm the potential benefit and adverse events of acupuncture.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12906-015-0586-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Background
Daodi medicinal material is widely used in Chinese herb medication. However, there is a lack of systematic methodology for identifying characteristics associated with good quality and reliable efficacy of Daodi med-material. Purpose The purpose of this study is to provide some evidence to further substantiate the use of Daodi medicinal materials. Methods Seven relevant databases were searched before July 2014. Two evaluators were responsible for screening and categorizing the results. The data was analyzed with Microsoft Excel 2007 and SPSS 21.0 statistical software. Results Overall, 107 articles were systematically analyzed. Of these studies, 55.1% (59/107) focused on the methodology to assess Daodi med-material, and 38.3% (41/107) were interested in med-material ingredients, soil physical and chemical properties, and the geological background system (GBS). Only 6.5% (7/107) of studies were mainly conducted as clinical trials and animal experiments. Conclusion Comparisons between Daodi and non-Daodi materials have been studied mainly in terms of the ingredients or composition of medical materials, soil physics and chemistry, and the GBS, and some identifying methodologies have been created to identify Daodi attributes. Until now, there is still no consensus of comparison criteria between Daodi and non-Daodi medicinal material. Only a few studies were conducted through animal experiments and clinical trials to determine Daodi superiority.
Determining effective traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) treatments for specific disease conditions or particular patient groups is a difficult issue that necessitates investigation because of the complicated personalized manifestations in real-world patients and the individualized combination therapies prescribed in clinical settings. In this study, a multistage analysis method that integrates propensity case matching, complex network analysis, and herb set enrichment analysis was proposed to identify effective herb prescriptions for particular diseases (e.g., insomnia). First, propensity case matching was applied to match clinical cases. Then, core network extraction and herb set enrichment were combined to detect core effective herb prescriptions. Effectiveness-based mutual information was used to detect strong herb-symptom relationships. This method was applied on a TCM clinical data set with 955 patients collected from well-designed observational studies. Results revealed that groups of herb prescriptions with higher effectiveness rates (76.9% vs. 42.8% for matched samples; 94.2% vs. 84.9% for all samples) compared with the original prescriptions were found. Particular patient groups with symptom manifestations were also identified to help investigate the indications of the effective herb prescriptions.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.