Pharmacoacupuncture for Idiopathic Parkinson's Disease: A Systematic Review of Randomized Controlled Trials

INTRODUCTION: Pharmacoacupuncture is a new acupuncture treatment that stimulates acupuncture points by injecting herbal medicine into them. Recently, pharmacoacupuncture has been widely used in the treatment of idiopathic Parkinson's disease in traditional East Asian medicine. The purpose of this systematic review is to evaluate the efficacy and safety of pharmacoacupuncture in the treatment of idiopathic Parkinson's disease. METHODS: The following electronic databases were searched for studies published in or before December 2016: Medline, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), EMBASE, OASIS, and CNKI, without language restriction. The main outcome assessed was the total Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS) score. The details of the pharmacoacupuncture intervention, such as the herbal medicine and acupuncture points used, were also investigated. RESULTS: From 138 studies, 3 randomized controlled trials were included; the number of patients analyzed was 134. Most of the studies showed considerable methodological flaws. There was heterogeneity of the intervention type and treatment duration in the included studies. Therefore, we could not conduct a meta-analysis. In one study, adjunctive bee venom pharmacoacupuncture therapy significantly improved total UPDRS scores compared with conventional therapy alone. Another study, which used adjunctive Kakkonein pharmacoacupuncture, did not reveal significant improvement compared with conventional therapy alone. A third study reported that Mailuoning pharmacoacupuncture was able to significantly improve the modified Webster Symptom Score when compared with no treatment. Adverse events related to the pharmacoacupuncture were reported in only one case, itching caused by the bee venom. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings regarding the efficacy of pharmacoacupuncture as a therapy for idiopathic Parkinson's disease are currently inconclusive. Further large and rigorous clinical trials are needed.