An overview of systematic reviews with meta-analysis was developed to summarize evidence on the effectiveness of prenatal yoga-based interventions on pain, psychological symptoms, and quality of life during pregnancy. CINAHL (via EBSCOhost), Embase, PubMed, SPORTDiscus (via EBSCOhost), and the Cochrane Library were searched from inception to 15 December 2022. The intervention of interest was any prenatal yoga-based intervention. Pain, psychological symptoms, and quality of life were considered as outcome measures. The methodological quality of systematic reviews was judged using AMSTAR 2. The primary study overlap among systematic reviews was evaluated, building a citation matrix and calculating the corrected covered area (CCA). A total of ten systematic reviews, including fifteen meta-analyses of interest and comprising 32 distinct primary clinical trials, were included. Meta-analyses on pain and quality of life were not found. Most meta-analyses (93%) showed that prenatal yoga-based interventions are more effective than control interventions in reducing anxiety, depression, and stress symptoms. However, the overall methodological quality of systematic reviews was judged as critically low, and primary study overlap among systematic reviews was very high (CCA = 16%). Altogether, prenatal yoga-based interventions could improve the mental health of pregnant women, although due to the important methodological flaws that were detected, future systematic reviews should improve their methodological quality before drawing firm conclusions on this topic.
OBJECTIVE: We aimed to summarize the evidence of the effects of pain neuroscience education delivered alone or combined with other interventions for chronic pain. DESIGN: An overview of systematic reviews with meta-analysis. LITERATURE SEARCH: CINAHL (via EBSCOhost), Embase, PsycINFO (via ProQuest), PubMed, and the Cochrane Library were searched from their inception to November 14, 2022. STUDY SELECTION CRITERIA: Systematic reviews (SRs) with meta-analyses including randomized clinical trials. The outcomes were pain and psychological symptoms. DATA SYNTHESIS: AMSTAR 2 assessed the methodological quality of SRs. The primary study overlap was evaluated by calculating the corrected covered area (CCA). RESULTS: We included 8 SRs including 30 meta-analyses of interest that comprised 28 distinct clinical trials. In some meta-analyses, pain neuroscience education delivered alone or combined with other interventions was more effective than control interventions for reducing pain intensity, pain catastrophizing, kinesiophobia, anxiety symptoms, and depression symptoms at some time points. However, other meta-analyses found a lack of effects of pain neuroscience education, and there were inconsistencies between meta-analyses covering the same outcome. The methodological quality of all SRs was critically low. The overlap, including all SRs, was high (CCA = 13%), and very high for SRs covering trials on chronic low back pain (CCA = 40%), chronic spine pain (CCA = 27%), and fibromyalgia (CCA = 25%). CONCLUSION: It is impossible to make clear clinical recommendations for delivering pain neuroscience education based on current meta-analyses. Action is needed to increase and improve the quality of SRs in the field of pain neuroscience education. J Orthop Sports Phys Ther 2023;53(6):353–368. Epub: 10 May 2023. doi:10.2519/jospt.2023.11833
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