SYSTEMATIC REVIEW article
Front. Neurol.
Sec. Neurorehabilitation
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fneur.2025.1684772
Acupuncture for post-stroke hiccup: an overview of systematic reviews
Provisionally accepted
- 1Beijing University of Chinese Medicine, Beijing, China
- 2Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine, Guangzhou, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Objective To describe and summarize the evidence from SRs of the efficacy and safety of acupuncture in the treatment of post-stroke hiccup, and to provide a reference for clinical practice and future research. Methods We conducted a systematic search across 8 electronic databases from their inception up to February 2025. This search encompassed systematic reviews focusing on acupuncture for post-stroke hiccup. The methodological quality was assessed using the AMSTAR 2. Corrected coverage area was used to calculate the degree of overlap of the original studies. The evidence quality was assessed using the GRADE approach. Results Of the ten eligible systematic reviews included, the methodological quality was evaluated as 1 (10.00%) low and 9 (90.00%) very-low-quality. The Corrected Coverage Area of the preliminary studies was moderate or high overlap. Acupuncture may alleviate hiccups symptoms and improving quality of life(certainty: moderate to very low). Safety data were limited and insufficient to draw firm conclusions. Conclusions Acupuncture may be a potential intervention for the treatment of post-stroke hiccup. These results should be interpreted with caution due to the methodological shortcomings and low evidence quality observed in current systematic reviews. There is an urgent need for more well-designed, high-quality randomized controlled trials.
Keywords: Acupuncture, Post-stroke hiccup, Quality of Life, Methodological quality, Quality of evidence, Overview of systematic reviews
Received: 13 Aug 2025; Accepted: 22 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Liu, Ma, Su, Shen, 孔 and Liu. 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: Jian-Ping Liu, liujp@bucm.edu.cn
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.