Acupuncture for Hypertension in Animal Models: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to summarize and evaluate the efficacy of acupuncture in hypertension animal study. METHODS: Studies were searched from six databases, including Medline, Embase, Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure, Wanfang Data, VIP information database, and Chinese Biomedical Literature Database. Study quality of each included study was evaluated according to the Animal Research: Reporting of In Vivo Experiments (ARRIVE) guidelines, and the risk of bias was evaluated by the Systematic Review Centre for Laboratory Animal Experimentation (SYRCLE) tool. Systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP), and mean arterial pressure (MAP) were selected as outcomes. Meta-analyses were performed using Stata 12.0 software. The effect size was calculated by combining SBP/DBP/MAP data with the random effects model, respectively. RESULTS: 67 studies containing 1522 animals were included. According to the ARRIVE guideline, 8 items were assessed as poor and 4 items were assessed as excellent. According to the SYRCLE tool, all studies were judged as having high risk of bias. Compared with the hypertension group, the pooled results showed significant antihypertension effects of acupuncture for SBP, DBP, and MAP. Similarly, compared with the sham-acupuncture group, the pooled results showed significant antihypertension effects of acupuncture for SBP, DBP, and MAP. CONCLUSION: Although pooled data suggested that the acupuncture group was superior to the hypertension group or sham-acupuncture group for SBP/DBP/MAP, the presentation of poor methodological quality, high risk of bias, and heterogeneity deserves cautious interpretation of the results.