Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Meta-Analysis
. 2020 Mar 31:2020:5901573.
doi: 10.1155/2020/5901573. eCollection 2020.

Verum- versus Sham-Acupuncture on Alzheimer's Disease (AD) in Animal Models: A Preclinical Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Fei-Yi Zhao  1 , Qiang-Qiang Fu  2 , Zhen Zheng  3 , Li-Xing Lao  4   5 , Hua-Ling Song  6 , Zumin Shi  7
Affiliations
Meta-Analysis

Verum- versus Sham-Acupuncture on Alzheimer's Disease (AD) in Animal Models: A Preclinical Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Fei-Yi Zhao et al. Biomed Res Int. .

Abstract

Background: Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a common health condition affecting senile people and leads to severe cognitive dysfunctions. Acupuncture has been shown to be a possible alternative natural remedy for AD in some animal studies.

Objective: To perform a systematic review to identify the effect of verum-acupuncture compared with sham-acupuncture on learning and memory performance among animal models of AD.

Methods: Experimental animal studies of treating AD via verum- and sham- acupuncture were searched in nine electronic databases, including Sciverse ScienceDirect, PubMed, Springer, Ebsco Medline, AMED, EMBASE (Elsevier), Scopus (Elsevier), PsycINFO (ProQuest), and OVID from the dates of the databases' inception to June 2019. The Morris water maze test was considered as an outcome measure. The software Revman 5.3 and Stata 16.0 were used to conduct the meta-analysis. Heterogeneity was examined by using I2 statistics. The publication bias was assessed via Begg's test by Stata 16.0.

Results: Twelve studies involving 229 animals met the inclusion criteria. Most of the studies had a moderate quality according to SYRCLE's risk of bias tool for animal studies. The results of the meta-analysis indicated that verum-acupuncture could reduce the escape latency (MD = -12.90, 95% CI (-17.08, -8.71), p < 0.001) and increase the time spent in the original platform quadrant (MD = 7.28, 95% CI (4.23, 10.33), p < 0.001) and frequency of the crossing former platform (MD = 2.01, 95% CI (1.53, 2.50), p < 0.001) compared with the sham-acupuncture.

Conclusions: Acupuncture is effective in improving cognitive functions in AD animal models, and this benefit is more than just a placebo effect. Further clinical trials are needed to confirm the findings.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Flow diagram of the study selection process.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Forest plot of verum- versus sham-acupuncture in escape latency.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Forest plot of verum- versus sham-acupuncture in platform crossover numbers.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Forest plot of verum- versus sham-acupuncture in time spent in the original platform quadrant.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Forest plot of verum- versus sham-acupuncture in swimming speed.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Sensitivity analysis on the outcome of escape latency.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Begg's publication bias test of escape latency.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Blennow K., de Leon M. J., Zetterberg H. Alzheimer’s disease. The Lancet. 2006;368(9533):387–403. doi: 10.1016/s0140-6736(06)69113-7. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Factsheet. Dementia. Geneva, Switzerland: World Health organization; 2012.
    1. Jindal H., Bhatt B., Sk S., Singh Malik J. Alzheimer disease immunotherapeutics: then and now. Human Vaccines & Immunotherapeutics. 2014;10(9):2741–2743. doi: 10.4161/21645515.2014.970959. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Lee D., Lee W. S., Lim S., et al. A guanidine-appended scyllo-inositol derivative AAD-66 enhances brain delivery and ameliorates Alzheimer’s phenotypes. Scientific Reports. 2017;7(1):p. 14125. doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-14559-7. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Devadhasan J. P., Kim S., An J. Fish-on-a-chip: a sensitive detection microfluidic system for alzheimer’s disease. Journal of Biomedical Science. 2011;18(1):p. 33. doi: 10.1186/1423-0127-18-33. - DOI - PMC - PubMed