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Efficacy and safety of acupressure in nausea and vomiting during pregnancy: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials

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Abstract

Objective

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the efficacy and safety of acupressure on nausea and vomiting during pregnancy.

Methods

PubMed, Embase, Springer, Web of Science, and the Cochrane Library were searched for all randomized controlled trials (RCT) of treating nausea and vomiting during pregnancy by acupressure from the inception date of database to July 31st, 2023. Study selection, data extraction, and risk of bias assessment were conducted independently by researchers. The methodological quality of included studies was evaluated by the Cochrane Collaboration's bias risk assessment tool, meta-analysis by Stata 17.0 software, and publication bias by Begg's test.

Results

A total of 11 RCTs involving 1378 pregnant women were included in this review, which was assessed to be moderate quality. 10 RCTs involving 1298 pregnant women were assessed for the meta-analysis. The results revealed that acupressure showed significant difference on improvement in symptom score compared with sham acupressure (pooled MD, − 1.33; 95%CI [− 2.06, − 0.61]; P < 0.001) or control group (pooled MD, − 0.73; 95%CI [− 1.08, − 0.39]; P < 0.001), and incidence of effective rate compared with sham acupressure group (pooled RR, 1.78; 95%CI [1.03, 3.07]; P = 0.039). However, no statistical significance was found between acupressure and control group (pooled RR, 4.53; 95%CI [0.67, 30.48]; P = 0.120) on effective rate. On comparing acupressure with sham acupressure, there was no beneficial effect on preventing nausea and vomiting during pregnancy (pooled RR, 0.83; 95%CI [0.50, 1.38]; P = 0.476), shortening the duration of hospital stay (pooled MD, − 0.78; 95%CI [− 1.98, 0.41]; P = 0.199) and improving patient satisfaction (pooled RR, 1.36; 95%CI [0.47, 3.91]; P = 0.570). Begg's test did not reveal any publication bias. Only one RCT reported minimal acupressure-related adverse events.

Conclusion

Acupressure may have potential favorable or encouraging effect on treating nausea and vomiting during pregnancy, but strong supportive data are not yet available. Well-designed and large-scale RCTs should be conducted for assessing and confirming the efficacy and safety of acupressure in nausea and vomiting during pregnancy.

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Data availability

Data included in article/supplementary material/referenced.

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Funding

We declare that we have no financial and personal relationships with other people or organizations that can inappropriately influence our work, there is no professional or other personal interest of any nature or kind in any product, service and/or company that could be construed as influencing the position presented in, or the review of, the manuscript entitled, “Efficacy and safety of acupressure in nausea and vomiting during pregnancy: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials”.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Management, Beijing University of Chinese Medicine, Beijing, 100029, China

    Xinhui Wang

  2. School of Acupuncture-Moxibustion and Tuina, Beijing University of Chinese Medicine, Beijing, 100029, China

    Guangyi Yang, Ke Li & Fujing Yang

  3. Qi-Huang Chinese Medicine School, Beijing University of Chinese Medicine, Beijing, 100029, China

    Xiaoyu Liang

  4. School of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Beijing University of Chinese Medicine, Beijing, 100029, China

    Shangping Wu

Authors
  1. Xinhui Wang
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  2. Guangyi Yang
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  3. Ke Li
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  4. Fujing Yang
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  5. Xiaoyu Liang
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Contributions

KL made contributions to the conception and design of the study, and critically revised the manuscript. XW extracted and analyzed data for studies, and drafted the original manuscript. GY provided methodological advice and analyzed data for the study. FY, XL and SW contributed to the acquisition and analysis of data.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ke Li.

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Wang, X., Yang, G., Li, K. et al. Efficacy and safety of acupressure in nausea and vomiting during pregnancy: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. Arch Gynecol Obstet 309, 1237–1248 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00404-023-07313-0

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