Efficacy of acupuncture in the treatment of limb dyskinesia after stroke: a systematic review and meta-analysis

- OBJECTIVE: This meta -anal-ysis was performed to investigate the effec-tiveness of acupuncture in post-stroke limb movement disorders. MATERIALS AND METHODS: An electronic search of databases including MEDLINE/PubMed, Web of Science, the Cochrane database, EMBASE, CBM, CNKI, WanFang, and VIP was performed to collect randomized controlled clinical studies on acupuncture administered for post-stroke dyski-nesia from inception to April 2023. Data includ-ing baseline information, Fugl-Meyer Assessment (FMA) scores, and Barthel Index (BI) were included and analyzed using the meta package in R language. RESULTS: After searching and screening, 17 pieces of literature involving 1,928 participants were included, with 962 participants in the control group and 966 in the study group. Results from the included studies suggested significant benefits provided by acupuncture to improve FMA scores and BI. In specific, incorporation of acupunc-ture in the treatment of post-stroke limb move-ment disorders significantly reduced the over-all FMA scores of patients by 3.45 (95% CI: 0.22, 6.69) points, the upper extremity FMA scores by 3.63 (95% CI: 0.64, 6.62) points, the lower extrem-ity FMA scores by 3.56 (95% CI: 1.78, 5.35) points, and BI by 7.75 (95% CI: 3.35, 12.16) points. CONCLUSIONS: Acupuncture as an adjunct to the management of post-stroke limb movement disorders contributes significantly to enhancing the motor function and quality of life of patients. How-ever, the evidence of this study is compromised by the limited quantity of the included randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and the mediocre method-ological quality. Therefore, high-quality randomized controlled trials are required to validate the benefits of acupuncture on the motor function of patients with post-stroke limb movement disorders.