Acupuncture at Sanyinjiao SP6 for patients with primary dysmenorrhea: Protocol for a systematic review and meta-analysis

BackgroundPrimary dysmenorrhea (PD) is a gynecological disease that seriously affects womens physical and mental health and quality of life. Sanyinjiao (SP6) is the most used acupoint for acupuncture treatment of PD, and acupuncture SP6 is more commonly used in the clinical treatment of PD, but evidence of effectiveness and safety is lacking. The purpose of this systematic review plan is to develop a study protocol that can evaluate the efficacy and safety of acupuncture SP6 in the treatment of PD. MethodsThe upper limit of retrieval time will be set to September 2023. Foreign and Chinese databases will be searched respectively: Cochrane Library, PubMed, EMBASE, Ovid, Korea Med, J-Global, J-Stage databases, and CNKI, CBM, SinoMed, VIP, Wanfang. Randomized controlled trials meeting the inclusion criteria will be screened by two independent reviewers, and data extraction and risk of bias assessment will be carried out. The primary outcome is dysmenorrhea symptoms, and the secondary outcomes include recent clinical cure rate, concomitant symptoms, serum prostaglandins, uterine artery blood flow resistance under ultrasound monitoring, and adverse reactions. Use RevMan V.5.3 software to perform the following operations: data synthesis, subgroup analysis, heterogeneity analysis, and sensitivity analysis. The evidence quality of clinical studies included in this study will be evaluated by the software of "Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development, and Evaluation". ResultsThis study will provide comprehensive clinical evidence for treating PD with acupuncture SP6. ConclusionThis systematic review will confirm whether acupuncture SP6 is safe and effective in treating PD clinically. Registration detailsPROSPERO CRD42020171664.