A Real-world Research of Huoxue Sanfeng Acupuncture Intervention on Blood Pressure in Patients with Cerebral Infarction and Hypertension

Abstract

BackgroundAs the most common chronic disease, hypertension is an important high-risk factor for cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases and vascular events. Previous studies have found that acupuncture has the effect of lowering blood pressure, but there is currently a lack of real-world research evidence for acupuncture to lower blood pressure.ObjectiveTo evaluate the blood pressure control effect of Huoxue Sanfeng acupuncture on hospitalized patients with cerebral infarction and hypertension in the real world.MethodsPatients with cerebral infarction and hypertension meeting the inclusion and exclusion criteria in the acupuncture ward of First Teaching Hospital of Tianjin University of Traditional Chinese Medicine from January 2014 to April 2020 were selected. There were 10 781 patiens who met the inclusion and exclusion criteria. According to whether the Huoxue Sanfeng acupuncture method was applied during hospitalization, the patients were divided into basic treatment group (n=10 424) and Huoxue Sanfeng group (n=357) . The propensity score matching (PSM) was used to obtain a new sample with balanced covariates between groups, and the linear mixed effects model was used to compare the average daily blood pressure and morning blood pressure of the two groups in the new sample, which was used to evaluate the effect of Huoxue Sanfeng acupuncture in controlling blood pressure.ResultsThere was no statistically significant difference in gender, age, coronary heart disease, diabetes, atrial fibrillation, the levels of HCY, TC, TG, LDL, and Cr levels before matching (P>0.05) , while the levels of HDL and Ur in basic treatment group were higher than those in the Huoxue Sanfeng group (P<0.05) .After matching, the differences in gender, age, coronary heart disease, diabetes, atrial fibrillation, the levels of HCY, TC, TG, HDL, LDL, Cr, Ur were not statistically significant difference between the two groups (P>0.05) . The results of the linear mixed effect model showed that the average systolic blood pressure in the Huoxue Sanfeng group was lower than the basic treatment group (P=0.002) ; the average level of diastolic blood pressure in the Huoxue Sanfenggroup and the basic treatment group was not statistically significant difference (P=0.083) ; there was no interaction between treatment methods and hospital admission time (P=0.532, P=0.775) . The results of the mixed effect model showed that after the intervention of different treatments, the systolic blood pressure in theHuoxue Sanfenggroup was lower than the basic treatment group in the morning (P=0.012) ; the morning diastolic blood pressure of the Huoxue Sanfenggroup and the basic treatment group was not statistically significant difference (P=0.539) ; there was no interaction between the treatment method and hospital admission time (P=0.974, P=0.985) .ConclusionHuoxue Sanfeng acupuncture can further control the daily average systolic blood pressure and early morning systolic blood pressure in hospitalized patients with cerebral infarction and hypertension.

Keywords

• |hypertension|cerebral infarction|huoxue sanfeng acupuncture|systolic pressure|diastolic pressure|real-world research