Clinical effect of acupuncture combined with traditional Chinese medicine in treatment of oligozoospermia/asthenozoospermia: a meta-analysis / 针刺研究

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the clinical effect of acupuncture combined with Chinese medicine in the treatment of oligozoospermia/asthenozoospermia. METHODS: Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of acupuncture combined with traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) in the treatment of oligozoospermia/asthenozoospermia published up to February 15, 2019 were searched from databases of CNKI, CBM, Wanfang Data, VIP, PubMed, Embase, and The Cochrane Library. Two reviewers independently performed quality assessment and data extraction of the studies, and RevMan5.3 was used to perform the meta-analysis. RESULTS: A total of 13 articles with 12 RCTs were included, with a total of 1 183 patients. The meta-analysis showed that acupuncture combined with TCM achieved a significantly higher pregnancy rate than TCM alone in the treatment of oligozoospermia/asthenozoospermia(risk ratio [RR] ＝1.46, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.13－1.90，P＝0.004). The patients treated with acupuncture combined with TCM had a significantly higher effective rate than those treated with TCM alone (RR＝1.17, 95% CI：1.10－1.24, P<0.000 01). Compared with TCM alone, acupuncture combined with TCM achieved significantly better improvements in sperm survival rate (mean difference [MD]＝8.28, 95% CI 6.48－10.08, P<0.000 01), sperm motility (MD＝17.01, 95%CI：11.06－22.96, P<0.000 01), sperm concentration (MD＝8.71, 95%CI：5.92－11.50, P<0.000 01), and number of grade A sperms (MD＝6.39, 95%CI：5.27－7.50, P<0.000 01). CONCLUSION: Acupuncture combined with TCM has a better clinical effect than TCM alone in the treatment of oligozoospermia/asthenozoospermia. Due to the low methodological quality of the studies included in this analysis, acupuncture combined with TCM in the treatment of oligozoospermia/asthenozoospermia should be used based on patients' conditions in clinical practice.