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BMC Complementary Medicine and Therapies
Published in: BMC Complementary Medicine and Therapies 1/2013

Open Access 01-12-2013 | Research article

The role of acupoint stimulation as an adjunct therapy for lung cancer: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Authors: Hai-Yong Chen, Shi-Guang Li, William CS Cho, Zhang-Jin Zhang

Published in: BMC Complementary Medicine and Therapies | Issue 1/2013

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Abstract

Background

Lung cancer is the leading cause of death in cancer patients. Clinical studies showed that a variety of acupoint stimulations have been extensively used for lung cancer patients, including needle insertion, injection with herbal extraction, plaster application, and moxibustion. However, the role of acupoint stimulation in lung cancer treatment was not fully reviewed.

Methods

In the present study, we conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis on the role of acupoint stimulation in lung cancer treatment by electronic and manual searching in seven databases, including Ovid (Ovid MEDLINE, AMED, CAB Abstracts, EMBASE), EBSCOhost research databases (Academic Search premier, MEDLINE, CIHAHL Plus), PreQuest (British Nursing Index, ProQuest Medical Library, ProQuest Dissertations & Theses A&I, PsycINFO), and ISI web of knowledge (Web of Science, BIOSIS Citation Index, Biological Abstracts, Chinese Science Citation Database), CNKI, Wanfang Data, and CQVIP.

Results

Our study showed that acupoint stimulation has strong immunomodulatory effect for lung cancer patients as demonstrated by the significant increase of IL-2, T cell subtypes (CD3+ and CD4+, but not CD8+ cells), and natural killer cells. Further analysis revealed that acupoint stimulation remarkably alleviates the conventional therapy-induced bone marrow suppression (hemoglobin, platelet, and WBC reduction) in lung cancer patients, as well as decreases nausea and vomiting. The pooled studies also showed that acupoint stimulation can improve Karnofsky performance status, immediate tumor response, quality of life (EORCT-QLQ-C30), and pain control of cancer patients.

Conclusions

Acupoint stimulation is found to be effective in lung cancer treatment, further confirmatory evaluation via large scale randomized trials is warranted.
Appendix
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Metadata
Title
The role of acupoint stimulation as an adjunct therapy for lung cancer: a systematic review and meta-analysis
Authors
Hai-Yong Chen
Shi-Guang Li
William CS Cho
Zhang-Jin Zhang
Publication date
01-12-2013
Publisher
BioMed Central
Published in
BMC Complementary Medicine and Therapies / Issue 1/2013
Electronic ISSN: 2662-7671
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1186/1472-6882-13-362

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