Effects of acupuncture on vascular dementia (VD) animal models: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Zhang, Z. Y. and Liu, Z. and Deng, H. H. and Chen, Q.

BMC Complement Altern Med (2018) 18: 302

DOI: 10.1186/s12906-018-2345-z

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Vascular dementia is the second most common type of dementia that causes cognitive dysfunction. Acupuncture, an ancient therapy, has been mentioned for the treatment of vascular dementia in previous studies. This study aimed to evaluate the effects of acupuncture in animal models of vascular dementia. METHODS: Experimental animal studies of treating vascular dementia with acupuncture were gathered from Embase, PubMed and Ovid Medline (R) from the dates of the databases’ creation to December 2016. We adopted the CAMARADES 10-item checklist to evaluate the quality of the included studies. The Morris water maze test was considered as an outcome measure. The software Stata12.0 was used for the meta-analysis. Heterogeneity was examined using I(2) statistics, and we conducted subgroup analyses to determine the causes of heterogeneity for escape latency and duration in original platform. RESULTS: Sixteen studies involving 363 animals met the inclusion criteria. The included studies scored between 4 and 8 points, and the mean was 5.44. The results of the meta-analysis indicated remarkable differences with acupuncture on increasing the duration in the former platform quadrant both in EO models (SMD = 1.56, 95% CI: 1.02 ~ 2.11; p \textless 0.00001) and 2-VO models (SMD 4.29, 95% CI 3.23 ~ 5.35; p \textless 0.00001) compared with the control groups. CONCLUSIONS: Acupuncture may be effective in improving cognitive function in vascular dementia animal models. The mechanisms of acupuncture for vascular dementia are multiple such as anti-apoptosis, antioxidative stress reaction, and metabolism enhancing of glucose and oxygen.

Citation

Zhang, Z. Y., Liu, Z., Deng, H. H., & Chen, Q. (2018). Effects of acupuncture on vascular dementia (VD) animal models: a systematic review and meta-analysis. BMC Complement Altern Med, 18(1), 302. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12906-018-2345-z Animals, Disease Models, Animal, Rats, Meta-analysis, Systematic review, *Acupuncture Therapy, Acupuncture, Dementia, Vascular/*therapy, interests. PUBLISHER’S NOTE: Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to, jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations., Not applicable. COMPETING INTERESTS: The authors declare that they have no competing, Vascular dementia

Keywords

• Animals
• Disease Models
• Animal
• Rats
• Meta-analysis
• Systematic review
• *Acupuncture Therapy
• Acupuncture
• Dementia
• Vascular/*therapy
• interests. PUBLISHER’S NOTE: Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to
• jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
• Not applicable. COMPETING INTERESTS: The authors declare that they have no competing
• Vascular dementia