The effectiveness and safety of moxibustion for treating benign prostatic hyperplasia: A protocol for systematic review and meta-analysis

BACKGROUND: Benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) is a disease of the urinary system. It is common in middle-aged and elderly men. Moxibustion is widely used to manage BPH and the associated lower urinary tract symptoms, but there is still lack of systematic review of moxibusiton for BPH. So the aim of this review is to comprehensively evaluate the effectiveness and safety of moxibustion in the treatment of BPH. METHODS: The following 8 electronic databases including PubMed (1966–2020), EMbase (1980–2020), the Cochrane Library, Web of Science (1900–2020), China National Knowledge Infrastructure Database (1979–2020), WanFang Database (1998–2020), Chinese Scientific Journal Database (1989–2020), and Chinese Biomedical Literature Database (1979–2020) will be searched. No language restrictions will be used. Researchers will retrieve databases, identify trials, extract data, and evaluate the quality of eligible randomized controlled trials, independently. The outcomes will include: total effective rate, the American Urologic Association Symptom Score, International Prostate Symptom Score, urinary flow rate (measured in mL/s), changes in prostate size (measured in cc), quality of life, side effects and adverse events. The quality of methodology and evidence will be rated by using the Cochrane risk-of-bias assessment tool and grading of recommendations, assessment, development, and evaluation tool, respectively. Data synthesis will be presented by the manager of the Cochrane Collaboration's RevMan 5.3.0. RESULTS: We will show the results of this study in a peer-reviewed journal. CONCLUSIONS: The findings will provide credible clinical evidence of moxibustion treatment for BPH. PROSPERO REGISTRATION NUMBER: CRD42020190630.