Abstract:Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of acupuncture combined with donepezil for Alzheimer's disease (AD). Methods: China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), Wanfang Data, Chinese BioMedical Literature Database (CBM), PubMed and Web of Science were searched for relevant randomized controlled trials (RCTs) from inception to February 17, 2021.The score data of cognitive scale and daily living ability scale were extracted from the selected literature, and the difference and standard deviation of each scale before and after treatment were calculated, and the data were analyzed by RevMan 5.4 software. Results: In total, 7 RCTs involving 425 participants were included in the study, 212 in observation group and 213 in control group. Meta-analysis showed that acupuncture plus donepezil therapy was superior to donepezil alone in improving MMSE (MD=0.52, 95%CI=0.18 to 0.86) and ADAS-Cog (MD=-1.78, 95%CI=-2.47 to-1.10) scores of AD patients. On the basis of GRADE system, scores of MMSE and ADAS-Cog were evaluated as low-quality while those of MoCA and ADL were critically low-quality. Conclusion: Current RCTs evidence indicates that combination of acupunc ture and donepezil may perform better on improving cognitive function of AD patients than donepezil alone. Further largesample RCTs, however, are still in desperate need to be carried.
