The immunomodulatory effect of acupoint application for childhood asthma: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Objective. To evaluate the evidence on the immunomodulatory effect of acupoint application for childhood asthma. Methods. Five electronic databases through October 2014 were searched. The risk of bias in eligible studies was assessed using the Cochrane Collaboration tool. Standardised mean difference (SMD) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) of random-effects model were calculated. And heterogeneity was assessed using the Cochran Q statistic and quantified with the I (2) index. Results. Six studies were included in our review. The aggregated results suggested that acupoint application showed the beneficial effect for childhood asthma in improving IgA (SMD, -0.83; 95% CI -1.14 to -0.52; P < 0.00001), IgE (SMD, -0.52; 95% CI -0.76 to -0.29; P < 0.001), IgG (SMD, -1.17; 95% CI -1.61 to -0.74; P < 0.0001), IL-4 (SMD, -0.57; 95% CI -0.91 to -0.23; P = 0.0009), and IFN-γ (SMD, -0.38; 95% CI -0.71 to -0.04; P = 0.03) but not IgM (SMD, -0.40; 95% CI -0.98 to 0.18; P = 0.18). And the effective dose of acupoint application may be 2-6 hours/time and a total of 3 times within 4 weeks. Conclusions. This review showed the positive evidence that acupoint application had the favorable immunomodulatory effect for childhood asthma. However, more studies with long follow-up are warrant to confirm the current findings.