The effectiveness and safety of acupuncture for depression: An overview of meta-analyses

Abstract

Purpose: To provide an overview of existing meta-analysis (MAs) on the efficacy and safety of acupuncture for depression, and assess the methodological quality and the strength of evidence of the included MAs.

Methods: We searched MAs of randomized trials that have evaluated the effects of acupuncture on depression in three international and three Chinese databases from their inception until August 2019. The methodological quality of included MAs was evaluated with the Assessing the Methodological Quality of Systematic Reviews 2 (AMSTAR-2), and the strength of evidence with the Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE). We used the intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC) to assess reviewer agreement in the pre-experiment.

Results: We included 31 MAs and 59 RCTs. The results of included MAs were conflicting, our meta-analyses found that acupuncture may confer small benefit in reducing the severity of depression by end of treatment than no treatment/wait list/treatment as usual(SMD -0.74, 95% CI -1.06 to -0.41, eight trials, 624 participants), control acupuncture (invasive, non-invasive sham controls) (SMD 0.27, 95% CI -0.51 to -0.04, 20 trials, 1055 participants), antidepressants(Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI)/ Tetracyclic antidepressants(TCAs)) (SMD -0.28, 95% CI -0.46 to -0.10, 30 trials, 3068 participants), acupuncture plus antidepressants versus antidepressants(SSRI/TCAs) (SMD -0.99, 95% CI -1.37 to -0.61, 17 trials, 1110 participants). Subgroup analyses showed that there was no difference between electro-acupuncture and invasive control (P = 0.37), electro-acupuncture and non-invasive control (P = 0.90), manual acupuncture and Tetracyclic antidepressants (P = 0.57), electro-acupuncture and Tetracyclic antidepressants (P = 0.07). Six MAs concluded that acupuncture reduced the incidence of adverse events compared with antidepressants. The evaluation with AMSTAR-2 showed that the quality of included MAs was low or critically low. The results of the GRADE evaluation showed that the strength of evidence was low to very low for most outcomes.

Conclusions: Although acupuncture appears to be more effective and safer than no treatment, control acupuncture and antidepressants, the quality of the available evidence was very low. Further methodologically rigorous and adequately powered primary studies are needed to confirm the effectiveness of acupuncture for depression.

Keywords: Acupuncture; Depression; Effectiveness; Meta-analysis; Overview; Safety.