Evidence Hub

The Effectiveness of Tuina in Relieving Pain, Negative Emotions, and Disability in Knee Osteoarthritis: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Hui Xu, Chi Zhao, Guang-Xin Guo, Yulin Li, X. A, Guo-Wei Qiu, Bingxin Kang, Xi-rui Xu et al.

Pain medicine (Malden, Mass.), 2022

104 participants · 35 citations

Abstract

OBJECTIVE

To evaluate the effectiveness of Tuina in relieving the pain, negative emotions, and disability of patients with knee osteoarthritis (KOA).

DESIGN

Single-centre, parallel, randomized controlled trial.

SETTING

Shanghai Guanghua Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine Hospital, Shanghai, China.

SUBJECTS

Adult patients with KOA who were able to speak Chinese and self-report symptoms were eligible.

METHODS

A total of 104 patients were randomly allocated to receive the 6-week treatment of Tuina (Tuina group) or celecoxib (celecoxib group). Data on pain, negative emotions, and disability were collected at baseline, at week 2, 4 and 6, and follow-up (one month after the last treatment). The primary outcomes were the pressure pain thresholds. The secondary outcomes were: (1) numerical rating scale at rest and with movement; (2) Hamilton Anxiety Scale; (3) Hamilton Depression Scale; (4) Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Osteoarthritis Index; and (5) clinical effective rate. The adverse events of the trial were evaluated.

RESULTS

In total, 99 patients completed the follow-up. Generalized linear mixed models were constructed to analyse the between-group differences. Statistically significant differences were found in the interaction effects (p < 0.05). In evaluating the group effect, statistical differences were found at week 6 and follow-up (p < 0.05). Further, all variables showed a time effect (p < 0.05). A statistical difference in the clinical effective rate was…

How strong is the evidence?

Evidence Hub reads this as a randomized trial, done in people. Its evidence level is 2 of 5 (High · randomized trial). Randomized trials of a reasonable size are the strongest single-study design. Reported size: 104 participants or records.

How the five levels of evidence work. The level is assigned automatically from the abstract and can be wrong, so check the paper.

Read the paper

Related studies

Go deeper in Evidence Hub

Evidence Hub adds a study data sheet (design, sample size, evidence level, key numbers), an AI summary and a chat grounded in the paper's text.

Open this study Sign up free