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Reliability of Evidence to Guide Decision-Making in the Use of Acupuncture for Postpartum Depression
1Nanchang Hongdu Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Nanchang, China.
Background:
There is conflicting evidence on the effectiveness of acupuncture in the treatment of postpartum depression (PPD). This study aimed to assess previous systematic reviews/meta-analyses (SRs/MAs) on the effectiveness of acupuncture to treat PPD.
Method:
SRs/MAs regarding the use of acupuncture for PPD were identified from the establishment of digital databases to November 2021. The Assessing the Methodological Quality of Systematic Reviews 2 (AMSTAR-2) was applied to evaluate the methodological quality of included SRs/MAs. The Grades of Recommendations, Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) was utilized to evaluate the evidence quality for outcomes of interest.
Results:
Six studies that conducted quantitative syntheses were included. According to AMSTAR-2, the methodological quality of these SRs/MAs was critically low owing to limitations of items 2, 4, and 7. According to GRADE, no study included high-quality evidence and most studies included low-quality evidence.
Conclusions:
Acupuncture m be beneficial for PPD, however, due to limitations of current evidence and inconsistent findings, further studies are needed to provide stronger evidence to draw definitive conclusions.
