Objective: This systematic review aimed to evaluate effectiveness and safety of moxibustion therapy for IPD patients.

Background: Idiopathic Parkinson’s disease (IPD) is a chronic neurodegenerative disorder which requires medical care for many years after the first diagnosis. Moxibustion, burning of Mugwort or Moxa for stimulating acupuncture point on the skin, is one of the common non-drug treatments for IPD in traditional East-Asian medicine. Currently there is no systematic reviews on the effect of moxibustion for IPD.

Methods: Electronic databases including Medline, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), EMBASE, OASIS (Korean database), CNKI (Chinese database) were searched until December, 2016. Search strategy were modified based on the individual databases but mainly 2 words, “Parkinson’s disease” and “Moxibustion” were combined appropriately for database search. Data extraction and risk of bias were assessed by two researchers (KTH and KSW) and an arbiter (CKH) decided disagreement between researchers. Risk ratio (RR) was used for the effect estimates for dichotomous outcomes and mean difference (MD) was for continuous outcomes in meta-analysis. Fixed effect model was planned to use for meta-analysis but random effect model was adopted if statistical heterogeneity was observed.

Results: A total of 10 studies (644 IPD patients) were included in this review (figure 1). Overall methodological rigor could not be ensured because detailed information was not suggested in most of the studies (figure 2). Comparing with moxibustion group and control group, there was no significant difference in the overall effectiveness ratio (RR 1.20, 95% CI [1.00 to 1.44], figure 3). About total UPDRS score, there was no significant difference between moxibustion and control interventions (MD -6.75, 95% CI [-14.4 to 0.92]) regardless of moxibustion type (direct moxibustion: MD -9.53 95% CI [-19.45 to 0.40] / Moxa stick: MD -3.65, 95% CI [-21.26 to 13.96], figure 4).  Adverse events related to moxibustion treatment were not reported in most of the studies.

Conclusions: Conclusive evidence on the benefit and harm of moxibustion therapy for IPD could not be suggested due to methodological problems and clinical heterogeneity among the included studies. More rigorous clinical studies will be necessary in future.

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MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/moxibustion-for-parkinsons-disease-a-systematic-review-of-randomized-controlled-trials/