The effectiveness of aquatic physical therapy intervention on disease activity and function of ankylosing spondylitis patients: a meta-analysis

ABSTRACT

This study aimed (i) to complement existing research by focusingon aquatic physical therapy was potentially beneficial to patients with AS; (ii)tosystematically analyze all evidence available in the literature about effectiveness of the aquatic physical therapy intervention on pain and disease activity in AS patients.

A systematic search was performed in major electronic databasesto identify studies reporting aquatic physical therapy intervention on pain and disease activity of AS patients. Three independent investigators screened the identified articles, extracted the data, and assessed the methodological quality of the included studies. Qualitative descriptions were conducted, and quantitative analysis was performed with RevMan software (version 5.3).The results were expressed in terms of mean difference(MD) and the corresponding 95% confidence interval.A total of five studies comprising 1,393 participants were included in the study. Meta-analyses showed that aquatic physical therapy interventions significantly reduced the pain scores(SMD=−0.44, 95 % CI:−0.84,−0.04, p=0.03) and BASDAI scores (MD=−0.40, 95% CI:−0.73,−0.06, p=0.02) because of follow up time among these studies; therefore, a subgroup analysis should be conducted for comparison. Aquatic physical therapy can statistically significantly reduce pain and disease activity in patients with AS compared with controls.

KEYWORDS:

• Ankylosing spondylitis
• aquatic physical therapy
• pain
• disease activity
• meta-analysis

Contributors

The authors contributed to the manuscript in the following way: Qian Zhao and ChenDong: study design, documents screening, data extraction, data analysis, interpretation of results, preparation of the manuscript; Qian Zhao and ChenDong contributed equally to this work. Zhifang Liu, Min Li, Juan Wang, and Yun Yin: data analysis, interpretation of results; Ruihong Wang: study design, methodological quality assessment, and preparation of the manuscript. All authors have read and approved the final manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by College graduate research and innovation of Jiangsu Province [KYCX17_1940].0