Is the combination of acupuncture and Western medicine superior to monotherapy in the treatment of patients with Alzheimer’s disease: A protocol for systematic review and network meta-analysis

Alzheimer disease (AD) is a common cause of dementia, and there are still a lack of treatment options to reverse or prevent disease progression. Existing evidence shows that acupuncture has advantages in the treatment of AD, but whether the efficacy of acupuncture belongs to the placebo effect remains controversial, and there is no strict systematic review and network meta-analysis to evaluate the efficacy and safety of acupuncture combined with Western medicine in the treatment of AD. METHODS: From the inception to February 2023, the Embase, Latin American and Caribbean Health Sciences Literature, Medline, the Cochrane Collaboration’s Controlled Clinical Trials, Scopus, China Biomedical Literature Database, Wanfang Database, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, and Australian Medical Index will be searched using the key phrases “acupuncture,” “warm needling,” “electroacupuncture,” “Alzheimer disease,” and “cohort” for all relevant studies. Quality assessment of all studies included in this review will be independently assessed by 2 reviewers using the Cochrane Collaborations tool. When significant heterogeneity is indicated, we will find the source of heterogeneity by subgroup or sensitivity analysis. DISCUSSION: This study will evaluate the efficacy of acupuncture combined with Western medicine in improving cognitive function and activities of daily living in AD patients. The results of this study will verify whether the efficacy of acupuncture in the treatment of AD belongs to the placebo effect, which will also provide a reference for the clinical use of acupuncture combined with Western medicine in the treatment of AD.