The Effect and Safety of Thunder-Fire Moxibustion for Low Back Pain: A Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials

BACKGROUND: Low back pain (LBP) is considered the leading cause of people living with years of disability worldwide. Notably, thunder-fire moxibustion (TFM) is a new type of moxibustion, which has been widely applied to treat pain syndromes for thousands of years. This study aims to provide evidence to evaluate the effect and safety of TFM in treating LBP. METHODS: A systematic search of PubMed, Web of Science, the Cochrane Library, Embase, EBSCO, CNKI, Wanfang Data, CBM, and VIP (until April 2021) was used to identify studies reporting pain intensity, disability, Japanese Orthopedic Association (JOA) score, and quality of life in patients with LBP. Randomized controlled trials (RCTs), which compared TFM and other therapies in LBP, were included. Meanwhile, methodological quality was evaluated using the Cochrane criteria for risk of bias, and the level of evidence was rated utilizing the GRADE approach. RESULTS: Twenty-one RCTs, including 2198 patients, satisfied the inclusion criteria. Compared with other therapies, the effect of TFM was statistically significant, pain intensity decreased (SMD = 0.94; 95% CI (0.74, 1.14); p < 0.00001), disability improved (SMD = 1.39; 95% CI (0.19, 2.59); p=0.02), and the JOA score increased (SMD = −1.34; 95% CI (−1.88, −0.80); p < 0.00001). It was also reported that the patient's quality of life improved after treatment for a period of 4 weeks (SMD = −0.29; 95% CI (−0.42, −0.16); p < 0.0001) and after a follow-up of 1 month (SMD = −0.20; 95% CI (−0.34, −0.07); p=0.003). The evidence level of the results was determined to be very low to low. CONCLUSIONS: Based on the existing evidence, it can be concluded that TFM may have a better effect than other treatments on LBP. However, it is not yet possible to assess the safety level of TFM therapy. Due to the universal low quality of the eligible trials and low evidence level, rigorously designed large-scale RCTs must be conducted in order to further confirm the results in this review.