Acupuncture for corona virus disease 2019: A protocol for systematic review and meta analysis

BACKGROUND: There is a worldwide outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), at present, accumulative attention has been paid to COVID-19 due to its global prevalence. Acupuncture may play a beneficial role in patients who suffer from COVID-19. In China and East Asia, acupuncture has been widely used to treat diverse diseases for thousands of years, as an important method of treatment now, it plays an indispensable role in the treatment of respiratory diseases in China. This study is designed to determine the efficacy and safety of acupuncture in COVID-19. METHODS: We will search the following sources for the Randomized controlled trials (RCT): The Cochrane Library, PubMed, EMBASE, Web of Science, Chinese Biomedical Literature Database (CBM), Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure Database (CNKI), Chinese Science, and the Wanfang Database. All the above databases will be searched from the available date of inception until the latest issue. No language or publication restriction will be used. Primary outcomes will include chest CT and nucleic acid detection of respiratory samples. RESULTS: The results will provide a high-quality synthesis of current evidence for researchers in this subject area. CONCLUSION: The conclusion of our study will provide evidence to evaluate whether acupuncture is an effective treatments for patients suffering from COVID-19. PROSPERO REGISTRATION NUMBER: CRD42020180875.