General situation of electro-acupuncture in treating depressive disorders: Comparing the effect with that of drug therapy
- VernacularTitle:电针治疗抑郁障碍:与药物治疗的效果比较
- Author:
Yan SHA
- Publication Type:Journal Article
- From:
Chinese Journal of Tissue Engineering Research
2005;9(44):181-183
- CountryChina
- Language:Chinese
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Abstract:
OBJECTIVE: To introduce the general situation of the internal clinical studies about electro-acupuncture in treating depressive disorders during the recent 20 years so as to investigate further the effectiveness and safety of electro-acupuncture in treating depressive disorders.DATA SOURCES: A computer-based online search of Pubmed database and Chinese biomedical literature database (CBM) was undertaken to identify relevant articles published in Chinese between 1984 and 2004 with the keywords of "electro-acupuncture, depression".STUDY SELECTION: The data were checked firstly, and the full-texts of clinical trials were searched. Inclusion criteria: ① having definite diagnostic criteria; ② randomized control study or control trial; ③ the interventions in the treatment group should be electro-acupuncture or electroacupuncture combined with antidepressant drugs or electro-acupuncture combined with placebo, and those in the control group should be antidepressant drugs, antidepressant drugs combined with modeling electroacupuncture and only electro-acupuncture or without antidepressant measures. Exclusion criteria: ① non-control study; ② the interventions in the treatment group or control group did not accord with the inclusive criteria;③ mechanism study; ④ repetitive study.DATA EXTRACTION: In total 99 relevant articles were collected and 15 were selected according to the in clusive criteria and the others were excluded.DATA SYNTHESIS: Of the 15 articles, 12 were randomized control studies and 3 were control studies. The studies all lasted 1-1.5 months, all were completed in China, and the number of patients was 30-241. Six studies compared the effect and safety in treating depression between electro-acupuncture and traditional antidepressant drug therapy, 2 studies compared the effect of electro-acupuncture and new antidepressant drug, 4studies observed the effect of electro-acupuncture combined with drug and drug 9r electro-acupuncture only on depression, 1 study compared the effect of electro-acupuncture with that of western medicine in the treatment of depression, and 2 studies observed the role of electro-acupuncture in treating post-stroke depression.CONCLUSION: Electro-acupuncture has the similar effect of western antidepressant drug in treating depressive disorders; moreover, it has the advantages of fewer side effects, higher safety and easier acceptance of the patients, etc. There are fewer clinical studies of large samples and strictly following the randomized control and blinded principle, so clinical studies of high quality are still needed to provide more powerful evidences.
