Curative Effect of Heat-sensitive Moxibustion on Primary Dysmenorrhea: A Meta-Analysis

Background. Primary dysmenorrhea (PD) refers to functional dysmenorrhea, typically characterized by cyclical, pronounced lower abdominal pain and seriously affects a woman’s work and quality of life. Some studies have reported that heat-sensitive moxibustion (HSM) is expected to alleviate the clinical symptoms. This systematic review aimed to evaluate the current evidence regarding the efficacy and safety of HSM on PD. Methods. 7 databases including PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, Web of Science, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), Wan Fang Data Knowledge Service Platform (Wan Fang Data), and China Science and Technology Journal Database (VIP) were searched for clinical randomized controlled trials. Meanwhile, Revman 5.3 software was used to evaluate the methodological quality of the included literature. The confidence interval (CI) of either relative risk or mean difference was set to 95%. Besides, the heterogeneity of the research results is tested by I2. Results. 19 studies were ultimately included in this meta-analysis. All of them were declared as random controlled trials. 18 studies reported the total effective rate of the test group and the control group, which was significantly higher (RR: 0.92; 95% CI: 0.85,0.99; P=0.031