ReviewNeuropsychiatric disease and treatment2025
Effectiveness and Safety of Acupuncture as an Adjunctive Therapy for Post-Stroke Depression: An Overview of Systematic Reviews.
Review in Neuropsychiatric disease and treatment, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- Central Neurobiological Mechanisms of Acupuncture in Post-Stroke Depression: Multi-Target and Network-Based Regulation.Neuropsychiatric disease and treatment · 2026Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Background: Post-stroke depression (PSD) is a common and serious neuropsychiatric complication that requires effective treatment options. Acupuncture as an adjuvant therapy shows promise, though current systematic reviews exhibit significant discrepancies in effectiveness/safety evidence with insufficient methodological rigor. Purpose: To evaluate systematic reviews assessing acupuncture as an adjuvant therapy for PSD. Methods: Electronic searches were conducted across eight databases from their inception to March 2024. The main search terms include "acupuncture and moxibustion therapy", "post-stroke depression" and "systematic evaluation". All systematic reviews underwent rigorous methodological evaluation employing four complementary assessment tools: AMSTAR 2 for methodological quality, ROBIS for risk of bias, PRISMA 2020 for reporting standards, and GRADE for evidence grading. The consistency level between the two reviewers is evaluated using the k-index. Results: Ten systematic reviews evaluated acupuncture as an adjuvant therapy for PSD. Using the AMSTAR 2 tool, 9 SRs (90%) were rated with a "very low" confidence level. According to the ROBIS criteria, only 3 SRs (30%) showed a low risk of bias. Although the report is overall comprehensive according to the PRISMA 2020 guidelines, there are significant shortcomings in areas such as evidence quality assessment (2/10, 20%). Employing the GRADE approach, 58.8% (20/34) as "very low". The reliability among evaluators is satisfactory. Acupuncture as an adjuvant therapy combined with conventional treatments significantly improved HAMD/NIHSS scores versus monotherapy. Conclusion: While acupuncture as an adjuvant therapy seems to offer benefits in improving depressive symptoms and daily functioning among PSD patients, the overall low methodological quality of current systematic reviews limits the strength of this conclusion. More rigorous and high-quality evidence is needed to confirm these findings. Systematic Review Registration: PROSPERO CRD 42024533181.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.