Moxibustion plus pharmacotherapy for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease

摘要

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a major cause of mortality and morbidity globally. Moxibustion has been used for respiratory diseases such as asthma however, there are few clinical studies of moxibustion for COPD. The aim of this report is to examine the efficacy and safety of moxibustion in combination with pharmacotherapy for the treatment of COPD. Five English databases and four Chinese databases were searched. Studies of moxibustion plus pharmacotherapy which reported on the outcomes of symptom severity (e.g. Borg or Medical Research Council scales), lung function (FEV1 or FVC, L or percent predicted), health-related quality of life (e.g. St George’s Respiratory Questionnaire), exercise capacity (six minute walk test), acute exacerbations, BODE index, effective rate or adverse events. Methodological quality was assessed using the Cochrane Collaboration’s risk of bias assessment tool. Data were analysed with RevMan 5.2 software. Five studies (514 participants) were included. Lung function was higher after treatment in those who received moxibustion plus pharmacotherapy compared with pharmacotherapy alone. A similar finding was seen for the outcome effective rate. No adverse events were reported. However, the reporting of study detail was poor and methodological weakness was noted. While benefit of combining moxibustion withpharmacotherapy was seen for some outcomes, the clinical relevance of the findings remains uncertain.Moxibustion combined with pharmacotherapy may increase lung function and effective rate more than pharmacotherapy alone and was well tolerated. Further research through large and rigorously designed clinical trials is needed to confirm the potential benefit of moxibustion plus pharmacotherapy for COPD.