Abstract
Background:
The study aims to evaluate the effectiveness and safety of acupuncture therapy for coronavirus disease 2019.
Methods:
The following electronic databases will be searched from December 2019 to December 2020: Medline, PubMed, EMBASE, Web of Science, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, Wan-fang database, Chinese Scientific Journal Database, Chinese Biomedical Literature Databases, and other databases. All published randomized controlled trials about this topic will be included. Two independent researchers will operate article retrieval, duplication removing, screening, quality evaluation, and data analyses by Review Manager (V.5.3.5). Meta-analyses, subgroup analysis, and/or descriptive analysis will be performed based on the included data conditions.
Results:
High-quality synthesis and/or descriptive analysis of current evidence will be provided from mortality rate, cure rate, the time of negative nucleic acid detection for 2 consecutive times (not on the same day), improvement of chest CT scans, disappearance time of fever and cough, and side effects.
Conclusion:
This study will provide the evidence of whether acupuncture is an effective and safe intervention for coronavirus disease 2019.
PROSPERO registration number: CRD42020179298.
Keywords: acupuncture, coronavirus disease 2019, protocol, systematic
Footnotes
Abbreviations: COVID-19 = coronavirus disease 2019, RCT = randomized controlled trial.
How to cite this article: Huang S, Wang S, Wang M, Rong J, Yu W, Li J, Han J, Yang D. Efficacy and safety of acupuncture therapy for COVID-19: a protocol for systematic review and meta-analysis. Medicine. 2020;99:22(e20407).
SH and SW are the co-first authors.
There is no requirement of ethical approval and informed consent, and it will be in print or disseminated by electronic copies.
This paper is funded by Shandong province Science and technology development program of Traditional Chinese Medicine (No. 2019-1059).
The authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose.
Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analyzed during the current study.