Endometrium receptivity and the dose-related effects of Acupuncture therapies in infertile women: a protocol for systematic review and meta analysis

IntroductionThe aim of the systematic review (SR) is to evaluate the efficacy of Acupuncture in endometrium receptivity(ER) of infertile women and find out dose-related between Acupuncture and ER improving. Methods and analysisWe will search four English databases: PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, Web of Science, and five Chinese databases: SinoMed (formerly Chinese Biomedical Database), CNKI (Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure), Wanfang Data, and China Biomedical Literature Database (CBM), China Science Journal Database (VIP database) from inception to February 2021 in English and Chinese. Also, we will manually retrieve other resources, including reference lists of identified publications, conference articles, and grey literature. All clinical randomized controlled trials related to Acupuncture for endometrium receptivity of infertile women will be included. Two review authors will perform all research selection, data extraction, and research quality assessment. According to suggestions, data will be synthesized in a fixed-effect model, or random effect model due to the heterogeneity test. The primary outcomes include ER (endometrial thickness and endometrial hemodynamic parameters) and clinical pregnancy rate(CPR). Secondary outcomes include a dose of the interventions(the starting time of Acupuncture, the duration, and frequency of Acupuncture sessions), and adverse events will be assessed. We will use the statistical package (RevMan5.4.0) provided by The Cochrane Collaboration to analyze data. The quality of evidence will be assessed by using the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development, and Evaluation (GRADE) framework. Ethics and disseminationSince this article does not contain patient personal information, ethical approval is not required. The contract is distributed by a peer-review Systematic review registrationPROSPERO, CRD42020206790 Strengths and limitations of this studyThis study will be the first ever systematic review and meta-analysis in dose-related effects of Acupuncture therapies in treating endometrium receptivity. The quality of evidence will be assessed by the Grading of Recommendations Assessment,Development, and Evaluation system. Our research approach will only focus on the dosage of acupuncture interventions. Due to the diversity of included treatment plans, Traditional Chinese Medicine and Moxibustion will increase the heterogeneity of results. We will only retrieve data from Chinese and English databases which could limit available data or result in language bias.