PMID- 35998757
OWN - NLM
STAT- MEDLINE
DCOM- 20221216
LR  - 20221221
IS  - 1873-6963 (Electronic)
IS  - 0965-2299 (Linking)
VI  - 71
DP  - 2022 Dec
TI  - Research methodology in acupuncture and moxibustion for managing primary 
      dysmenorrhea: A scoping review.
PG  - 102874
LID - S0965-2299(22)00076-0 [pii]
LID - 10.1016/j.ctim.2022.102874 [doi]
AB  - BACKGROUND: Acupuncture and moxibustion have promising effects in managing 
      primary dysmenorrhea. However, some evidence from clinical trials remains 
      controversial due to methodological flaws in study designs that involve 
      acupuncture and its related modalities and require urgent attention and dialogue. 
      METHODS: Allied and Complementary Medicine Database (AMED), Cochrane Library, 
      Excerpta Medica database (EMBASE), PubMed, Web of Sciences, Chinese Biological 
      Medicine (CBM), China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), VIP Database for 
      Chinese Technical Periodicals (VIP), and Wanfang database were searched from 
      their inception to July 2021. Data were extracted based on the types of study 
      design, primary outcome measures, adverse events (AEs), and participants' 
      subjective views. RESULTS: Most studies (n = 282, 93 %) were published in Chinese 
      and 21 (7 %) in English. Among these, there were 209 (69 %) randomized controlled 
      trials (RCTs), 39 (13 %) non-randomized controlled trials (nRCTs), 30 (10 %) 
      case-series reports, 15 (5 %) cohort studies, and 10 (3 %) case reports. The most 
      frequent reported outcome was pain, followed by emotion, sleeping quality, 
      quality of life, skin temperature, changes in brain function, uterine and ovarian 
      blood flow, and reproductive endocrine level. AEs were reported in 37 studies 
      with mild events, and all recovered without actions taken; 31 trials reported no 
      AEs; 235 failed to report any AEs. One RCT found that the satisfaction rate of 
      the intervention group was statistically significantly higher than the control 
      group. CONCLUSION: Clinical studies on acupuncture and its related modalities 
      face methodological challenges and require urgent attention. RCT with blinding 
      and sham control might be the gold standard trial design. However, it may not be 
      the most suitable research method for these modalities. We recommend using 
      pragmatic RCTs in this field, where trial protocol registration on the trial 
      registry platforms and detailed safety reporting should be mandatory.
CI  - Copyright (c) 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.
FAU - Liu, Weiting
AU  - Liu W
AD  - School of Nursing and Midwifery, Edith Cowan University, Perth, Australia. 
      Electronic address: weitingl@our.ecu.edu.au.
FAU - Wang, Carol Chunfeng
AU  - Wang CC
AD  - School of Nursing, Midwifery, Health Sciences & Physiotherapy, The University of 
      Notre Dame Australia, Perth, Australia.
FAU - Lee, Khui Hung
AU  - Lee KH
AD  - School of Science, Edith Cowan University, Perth, Australia.
FAU - Ma, Xiaopeng
AU  - Ma X
AD  - Shanghai Research Institute of Acupuncture and Meridian, Shanghai, China.
FAU - Kang, Timothy Leen
AU  - Kang TL
AD  - Institute of Chinese Acuology, Perth, Australia.
LA  - eng
PT  - Journal Article
PT  - Review
DEP - 20220820
PL  - Scotland
TA  - Complement Ther Med
JT  - Complementary therapies in medicine
JID - 9308777
SB  - IM
MH  - Female
MH  - Humans
MH  - Research Design
MH  - *Moxibustion/methods
MH  - *Acupuncture Therapy/methods
MH  - Quality of Life
MH  - China
MH  - Dysmenorrhea/drug therapy
OTO - NOTNLM
OT  - Acupuncture
OT  - Clinical studies
OT  - Methodology
OT  - Moxibustion
OT  - Primary dysmenorrhea
OT  - Scoping review
COIS- Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declared no potential conflicts of 
      interest.
EDAT- 2022/08/24 06:00
MHDA- 2022/12/15 06:00
CRDT- 2022/08/23 19:24
PHST- 2021/10/28 00:00 [received]
PHST- 2022/07/20 00:00 [revised]
PHST- 2022/08/19 00:00 [accepted]
PHST- 2022/08/24 06:00 [pubmed]
PHST- 2022/12/15 06:00 [medline]
PHST- 2022/08/23 19:24 [entrez]
AID - S0965-2299(22)00076-0 [pii]
AID - 10.1016/j.ctim.2022.102874 [doi]
PST - ppublish
SO  - Complement Ther Med. 2022 Dec;71:102874. doi: 10.1016/j.ctim.2022.102874. Epub 
      2022 Aug 20.