Efficacy and safety of acupuncture therapy for psoriasis: an overview of systematic reviews

Abstract

Background: Acupuncture therapy is a method of piercing needles into acupoints to treat diseases with/ without corresponding manipulations, which could serve as a useful supplementary therapy for psoriasis. The present study aimed to outline and sum up current evidence from systematic reviews (SRs)/meta-analyses (MAs) that investigate the clinical efficacy of acupuncture on psoriasis.Methods: A comprehensive search involving eight electronic databases was conducted from the date of inception to July 2021, and grey literatures were manually searched. The research was selected according to prespecified inclusion criteria and relevant data were obtained. The methodological quality of the included SRs was scrutinized using the Assessing the Methodological Quality of Systematic Reviews 2 (AMSTAR-2) tool. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) was used to appraise the reporting quality of the included SRs. Risk of Bias in Systematic Reviews (ROBIS) was selected for the evaluation of bias risk of the included SRs. Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development, and Evaluation (GRADE) was applied to determine the quality of evidence from primary outcome measures.Results: After screening, seven SRs/MAs met the inclusion criteria, including two English and five Chinese articles. All of the SRs were published between 2015 and 2020. Based on AMSTAR-2, the quality of all SRs was rated as dangerously low. Using the PRISMA-A checklist, major reporting flaws were observed in the financial statements, protocols, and registrations of the included literature. According to the ROBIS tool, two SRs/MAs were classed as low bias risk. Using the GRADE tool, this review contained 27 outcomes, with only one being classified as high-quality evidence, seven moderate-quality evidences, and 19 as low-quality evidence. The present research results advocated acupuncture therapy as a supplementary treatment for psoriasis patients; however, the evidence should still be treated with caution due to certain limitations.Conclusions: Our overview suggests that acupuncture could be used as a complementary therapy to produce effective clinical result for psoriasis. Nonetheless, considering the poor quality of SRs/Mas that advocate these findings, studies with more rigorous design, larger populations samples and of higher quality are called for to provide stronger evidence for definitive conclusions.