SYSTEMATIC REVIEW article
Front. Aging Neurosci.
Sec. Parkinson’s Disease and Aging-related Movement Disorders
Volume 17 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fnagi.2025.1621052
This article is part of the Research TopicParkinson Disease: Current findings and challenges in diagnosing and treating motor and non-motor symptomsView all 5 articles
Effects of transcranial alternating current stimulation on neurophysiologic motor function in Parkinson's patients: a systematic review and meta-analysis
Provisionally accepted
- Department of Rehabilitation, Ganzhou People's Hospital, Ganzhou, China
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This systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to evaluate whether tACS improves neurophysiologic motor function in patients with Parkinson's patients.: We searched PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, and Cochrane Library for eligible studies from inception to March 2025. Measured outcomes included two indicators of neurophysiologic function: motor evoked potentials and short-term intracortical inhibition. The Cochrane risk of bias tool was used to evaluate the quality of the included literature, and extracted data were qualitatively synthesized and meta-analyzed.Results: Out of the 145 studies identified from the electronic databases, 7 fulfilled the inclusion criteria. Our results indicate that tACS significantly improved motor function in patients with PD compared to patients without tACS treatment. Motor function was assessed using motor evoked potentials (standardized mean deviation [SMD] = 2.65; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 2.02 to 3.27, I² = 39%, P < 0.00001) and short-interval intracortical inhibition (SMD = 1.88; 95% CI = 1.47 to 2.30, I² = 47%, p < 0.00001).Our findings suggested that tACS was strongly associated with improvements in motor evoked potentials and short-interval intracortical inhibition and could significantly improve neuromotor function. The results of this study provide additional evidence for the effectiveness of 2 tACS and encourage the use of tACS in PD rehabilitation in clinical practice.
Keywords: transcranial alternating current stimulation, Parkinson's disease, Rehabilitation therapies, Motor evoked Potentials, Short-interval intracortical inhibition
Received: 30 Apr 2025; Accepted: 22 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Ye, Huang, Shao, Wu and Hui. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Miao Huang, Department of Rehabilitation, Ganzhou People's Hospital, Ganzhou, China
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