BACKGROUND: A large number of clinical research data show that acupoint injection has
the advantages of good therapeutic effect and few adverse reactions in the
treatment of knee osteoarthritis, but there is a lack of related multicenter
and large-sample clinical trial.
OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the effect of acupoint
injection on the pain improvement and joint function in patients with knee
osteoarthritis by meta-analysis.
METHODS: CNKI, Wanfang, VIP, CBM, PubMed,
Embase and Cochrane Library databases were searched for the randomized
controlled trials concerning the acupoint injection for treating knee
osteoarthritis published before May 2019. The observation group was acupoint
injection or acupoint injection combined with other treatments. The control
group was the treatments different from acupoint injection. The language was
either in Chinese or English. After screening, the data included in the study
were extracted by Review Manager 5.3 software for meta-analysis.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: (1) Sixteen randomized
controlled trials were included, involving 1 287 patients (648 cases in the observation
group, and 639 cases in the control group). (2) Meta-analysis results showed
that the overall effective rate, cure rate, Lysholm score and Japanese
Orthopaedic Association scores in the observation group were significantly
higher than those in the control group [OR=3.23,
95%CI (2.19, 4.76), Z=5.91, P < 0.000 01; OR=1.86,
95%CI (1.35, 2.58), Z=3.74, P=0.000 2; MD=7.87, 95%CI (2.66, 13.08), Z=2.96, P=0.003; MD=9.16, 95%CI (4.18, 14.13), Z=3.61, P=0.000 3]. The Visual Analogue Scale
score, WOMAC score, Lequesne index score, and the incidence of adverse reactions
between two groups showed no significant difference [MD=-1.11,
95%CI (-2.29,0.07), Z=1.84, P=0.07; MD=-7.56, 95%CI (-17.26,2.14), Z=1.53, P=0.13; MD=-0.46, 95%C I(-1.62, 0.71), Z=0.77, P=0.44; OR=1.31, 95%CI (0.31,
5.57), Z=0.37, P=0.71]. (3) These results indicate that the efficacy of acupoint
injection for treating knee osteoarthritis is accurate. Because the literature
quality included in the study is not high and bias may exist, more high-quality
randomized controlled trials are still needed to verify the conclusions.