Focus on Alternative and Complementary Therapies
www.pharmpress.com/fact
Focus Alternat Complement Ther©2005 Pharmaceutical Press
Focus Altern Complement Ther 2003; 8: 516–7
To systematically review papers on acupuncture and acupressure in relation to insomnia, assessing the quality of evidence and summarising the treatment parameters.
A computerised search of Medline, Proquest, The Cochrane Library, Web of Science (WOS), AMED, CINAHL, CANCERLIT, BNI and PubMed was undertaken between 1985 and 2003, supplemented by hand-searching of reference lists of relevant articles. Eligible studies were RCTs published in any language; uncontrolled trials and case studies, published in English; in human adults suffering from insomnia who received body or ear acupuncture/acupressure. Uncontrolled trials and case studies were included in order to supplement the information on treatment parameters retrieved from the eligible RCTs.
Eight RCTs, one uncontrolled study, and 15 case studies were eligible for inclusion. In terms of treatment parameters there was some consistency in the points chosen, for example, Ht7, Sp6, Ki3 and PC6. For manual acupuncture, the length of treatment time ranged from 20 to 45 min, when stated. The number of sessions varied from daily treatments to one or two times per week, lasting between 3 and 12 weeks. The objective outcome assessment was either polysomnography in a sleep laboratory, or actigraph wrist analysis. Subjective outcomes adopted varied between the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), to patients/therapists’ ratings of percentage improvements.
Few RCTs (n = 8) have been published on the use of acupuncture/acupressure for insomnia. Although there are some similarities in treatment parameters used, there is still a great deal of variability and lack of documentation in the published literature.
