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Category: Project

Description: Introduction: Insomnia remains one of the most common sleep disorders in the elderly, with high prevalence and substantial consequences for patients’ general health. Despite that increasing clinical trials have indicated that acupuncture seems to be effective for insomnia in the elderly, comparative efficacy and safety of different acupuncture methods for elderly individuals with insomnia has been unclear. Therefore, this protocol outlined a plan to evaluate and rank the efficacy and safety of various acupuncture approaches for insomnia in the elderly. Methods: A systematic search of 8 bibliographic databases will be conducted from their inception to 31 October 2021, including Cochrane Library, MEDLINE (via PubMed), Embase, Web of Science, Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), Wanfang Database, VIP Database, and Chinese Biomedical Literature Database (CBM). Randomised controlled trials investigating acupuncture methods for insomnia in the elderly, published in English or Chinese will be included. The primary outcome is sleep quality measured by the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI). Two reviewers will independently perform study selection, data extraction and risk assessment of bias. The quality of included literatures will be appraised using Cochrane risk-of-bias tool (ROB 2.0). ADDIS (Aggregate Data Drug Information System) V.1.16.8 will be used to conduct Bayesian network meta-analysis. The quality of evidence will be evaluated using the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation System (GRADE). Discussion: In this study, the results will provide credible evidence to assess the efficacy and safety of acupuncture therapies for elderly patients with insomnia, assisting patients, physicians and clinical research investigators to select the most appropriate acupuncture method. Keywords: Acupuncture therapy; elderly, insomnia; network meta-analysis (NMA)