Journal of Integrative Medicine & Therapy

Research Article

The Effect of Acupressure on Blood Sugar Reduction in Diabetic Patients: A Systematic Review and Metaanalysis

Dadkhah-Tehrani M1, Adib-Hajbaghery M2* and Safa A2

1Department of Medical Surgical Nursing, Kashan University of Medical Sciences, Iran
2Trauma Nursing Research Center, Kashan University of Medical Sciences, Iran
*Address for Correspondence: Adib-Hajbaghery M, Trauma Nursing Research Center, Kashan University of Medical Sciences, Kashan, Iran, Phone: +983155540021, Fax: +983155546633, Postal code: 8715981151; E-mail: adib1344@yahoo.com
Submission: 15 October 2020
Accepted: 25 November 2020
Published: 07 December 2020
Copyright: © 2020 Dadkhah-Tehrani M, et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Background: Diabetes mellitus is one of the most common and costly diseases worldwide. Although there are few reports of the impact of acupressure on the reduction of blood sugar in diabetic patients, no systematic review is available in this regard.
Objective: This meta-analysis study was conducted to investigate the effect of acupressure on blood sugar reduction in patients with diabetes mellitus.
Methods: This study was conducted in accordance with the PRISMA guideline. To find relevant documents, internet searching was performed independently by two researchers and without any time limit till 2019 May 22 on the international databases of PubMed, Scopus, Web of Knowledge, and Google scholar as well as national databases of Magiran and SID. The quality of studies was assessed using the CONSORT checklist. The Stata software (ver.14) was used to analyze the data and the I2 index was used to assess the heterogeneity of the studies.
Results: A total of three studies that have been conducted in Iran and Indonesia were included in the meta-analysis. The data were firstly analyzed using the fixed effects model which indicated a high level of heterogeneity between the studies (I2 = 98.1%, P = 0.0). Afterward, the random effect model was used and the results showed that acupressure can reduce blood sugar by an average of 90.36 mg (-164.77, -15.94, CI: 95%).
Conclusion: Acupressure has a positive effect on reducing blood sugar in patients with diabetes mellitus. However, more studies are needed in this area.