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SYSTEMATIC REVIEW article

Front. Pharmacol.

Sec. Obstetric and Pediatric Pharmacology

Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fphar.2025.1554438

This article is part of the Research Topic Precision Medicine in Pediatrics - Volume II View all 18 articles

The Effect of Therapeutic Massage Combined with Conventional Therapy in Children with Functional Dyspepsia: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

Provisionally accepted
Shaohong Lin Shaohong Lin 1Ruming Ye Ruming Ye 1Guanhong Wu Guanhong Wu 1Lixia Wu Lixia Wu 2Ying Lin Ying Lin 1Dan Li Dan Li 1Namei Xie Namei Xie 1Huiyue Zhang Huiyue Zhang 2*
  • 1 Xiamen Children's Hospital, Xiamen, China
  • 2 Jinjiang City Hospital, Jinjiang, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Background: Therapeutic massage has been widely used for functional dyspepsia (FD) in children. Emerging evidence suggests that it serves as an effective complementary therapy for pediatric FD. However, no related systematic reviews have been published to date.Objective: To conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis to evaluate the effectiveness of therapeutic massage in conjunction with conventional therapy for children with FD.A search was conducted across PubMed, the Cochrane Library, and nine additional databases, up to November 2024. We included randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that recruited children with functional dyspepsia. These trials compared therapeutic massage combined with conventional therapy to conventional therapy alone. Dichotomous symptom data were aggregated to calculate the relative risk (RR) of overall response following therapy. Continuous data were aggregated utilizing a standardized mean difference with a 95% confidence interval.The search identified 1190 citations. Twelve RCTs were eligible for inclusion, which contained 1161 patients. The response rate of combination therapy, which includes therapeutic massage alongside conventional therapy, was found to be superior to that of conventional therapy alone. Subgroup analysis indicated that both point massage and chiropractic, when combined with conventional therapy, also demonstrated superior response rates compared to conventional therapy alone. Subgroup analysis of the frequency of intervention over a 2-week duration of therapeutic massage indicated that the overall response rates for combination therapy at frequencies of 5 times per week and 7 times per week were superior to those of conventional therapy. In comparison to 2 conventional therapy, combination therapy markedly reduced symptom scores related to abdominal pain, flatulence, anorexia, eructation, nausea and vomiting, and early satiety.Additionally, it enhanced levels of growth hormone-releasing peptide, neuropeptide Y, motilin, and gastrin, while decreasing levels of 5-Hydroxytryptophan.Results demonstrated that compared to conventional therapy, therapeutic massage combined with conventional therapy can significantly reduce symptoms and enhance gastrointestinal hormone levels in children with functional dyspepsia. However, due to the heterogeneity of the findings and the low quality of evidence, further extensive and methodologically sound trials are necessary to validate whether therapeutic massage can serve as an effective complementary therapy for pediatric functional dyspepsia.

    Keywords: Therapeutic massage, functional dyspepsia, Child, Randomized control trials, Systematic review, Meta-analysis

    Received: 02 Jan 2025; Accepted: 28 Mar 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Lin, Ye, Wu, Wu, Lin, Li, Xie and Zhang. 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: Huiyue Zhang, Jinjiang City Hospital, Jinjiang, China

    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.

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