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Updated: Jul 17, 2025
Acupoint Catgut Embedding Therapy for Abdominal Obesity Treatment
Published on: November 22, 2024
Acupoint catgut embedding for simple obesity in animal studies: a systematic review and Meta-analysis
Zhao HuiYan1,2,3, Jun Purumea4, Lee Chaewon5
1Korean Convergence Medical Science, University of Science and Technology (UST), School of Korea Institute of Oriental Medicine.
Objective:
To assess the efficacy of acupoint catgut embedding (ACE) for simple obesity in preclinical animal experiments.
Methods:
We searched the following 14 electronic databases: PubMed, Cochrane Library, EMBASE, Oriental Medicine Advanced Searching Integrated System, KoreaMed, Korean Studies Information Service System, Science-on, Research Information Sharing Service, Korea Citation Index, Korea Traditional Knowledge Portal, China Network Knowledge Infrastructure Database, Wanfang Database, Chinese Science and Technology Journal Database, and Chinese Biology Medicine Database, from inception to November 2021 without language limitation. The assessment was performed according to the guidelines of Animal Research: Reporting of experiments; and Meta-analysis was performed using Reviewer Manager 5.4.1 software.
Results:
Twenty-four studies involving 813 animals were selected. Meta-analysis showed that ACE was beneficial for weight control [ 40, = -50.63, 95% (－57.59, －43.67), 0.000 01, = 0%] and reduced the Lee index [ 40, = －18.79, 95% (－20.01, －17.57), 0.000 01, = 0%]. However, when efficacy of ACE was compared with that of manual acupuncture, electroacupuncture, or oilistat therapy, statistical difference was not observed between the two groups.
Conclusions:
This systematic review suggests that ACE may be efficacious in treating obesity. Moreover, the analyses highlighted the necessity to perform well-designed, higher-quality experiments.
