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Randomized Controlled Trial
. 2020 Oct 1;15(10):e0239703.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0239703. eCollection 2020.

Acupuncture decreased the risk of stroke among patients with fibromyalgia in Taiwan: A nationwide matched cohort study

Ming-Cheng Huang  1   2 , Hung-Rong Yen  1   3   4   5 , Cheng-Li Lin  6 , Yu-Chen Lee  1   7 , Mao-Feng Sun  1   8 , Mei-Yao Wu  1   9
Affiliations
Randomized Controlled Trial

Acupuncture decreased the risk of stroke among patients with fibromyalgia in Taiwan: A nationwide matched cohort study

Ming-Cheng Huang et al. PLoS One. .

Erratum in

Abstract

Background: The aim of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of acupuncture in decreasing the risk of stroke in patients with fibromyalgia.

Methods: We enrolled patients who was newly diagnosed as having fibromyalgia between 1 January, 2000 and 31 December, 2010 from the Taiwanese National Health Insurance Research Database. The claim data for both the acupuncture cohort and non-acupuncture cohort were assessed from the index date to 31 December, 2013. A Cox regression model adjusted for age, sex, comorbidities, and drugs use was used to compare the hazard ratios of the two cohorts. The cumulative incidence of stroke was estimated by using the Kaplan-Meier method.

Results: After performing a propensity score matching with a 1:1 ratio, there were 65,487 patients in the acupuncture and non-acupuncture cohorts with similar distributions in the baseline characteristics. The cumulative incidence of stroke was significantly lower in the acupuncture cohort (log-rank test, p < 0.001). In the follow-up period, 4,216 patients in the acupuncture cohort (11.01 per 1000 person-years) and 6,849 patients in the non-acupuncture cohort (19.82 per 1000 person-years) suffered from stroke (adjusted HR 0.53, 95% CI 0.51-0.55). Acupuncture favorably affected the incidence of stroke regardless of the patient's age, sex, comorbidities, and conventional drug use.

Conclusions: Our study found that acupuncture might have a beneficial effect on reducing the risk of stroke in patients with fibromyalgia in Taiwan. Additional clinical and basic science studies are warranted.

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Conflict of interest statement

No authors have competing interests.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. Study population flowchart.
We identified 169,195 patients who were newly diagnosed with fibromyalgia between 2000 and 2010. After 1:1 propensity score matching by sex, age, comorbidities, drug use, diagnostic year and index year was performed, the acupuncture cohort and non-acupuncture cohort both comprised 65,487 patients.
Fig 2
Fig 2. The estimated cumulative incidence of stroke for the acupuncture and non-acupuncture cohorts with fibromyalgia.
Result of Kaplan-Meier analysis showed that the incidence of stroke in the acupuncture cohort was significantly lower than that in the non-acupuncture cohort.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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