Effect of Auriculotherapy on Sleep Quality in Elderly With Chronic Low Back Pain: A Single-blind Randomized Clinical Trial
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Objective: One of the common problems that leads to poor sleep quality in the elderly is low back pain. This study aims to evaluate the effect of auriculotherapy (ear acupressure) on the sleep quality of elderly people with chronic low back pain. Methods: This single-blind randomized clinical trial was conducted in 2019 on 70 older adults with chronic low back pain in Kashan, Iran, who were selected using a convenience sampling technique. After obtaining a written informed consent, they were assigned into intervention and sham groups using the block randomization method. In the intervention group, the pressure was applied to ShenMen, sympathetic, subcortex and low back points of the ear, while in the sham group, the pressure was applied to the points that were not associated with the low back pain. The Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) and McGill Pain Questionnaire (MPQ) were completed at the beginning of the study, at the end of intervention, and one month after the end of intervention. Six patients from the Sham group and 2 patients from the intervention group were excluded from the study. The data of 62 elderly (in sham group 29 and in intervention group 33) according to Per-Protocol (PP) and data of all samples as Intention to Treat (ITT) were analyzed using covariance analysis and repeated measures ANOVA. Results: There was a statistically significant difference between the intervention and sham groups in terms of the duration of disease at baseline (P=0.012). The interaction effect of time and group on the sleep quality was significant (P<0.0001). Sleep quality in the intervention group was significantly better than in the sham group at the end of the intervention and also during the one-month follow-up period (P<0.0001). Within-group comparison results reported a significant difference in the sleep quality between three evaluation times in the intervention group (P<0.0001). Conclusion: Auriculotherapy can improve sleep quality in the elderly with chronic low back pain. It is recommended to use auriculotherapy as a complementary therapy for treating these elderly groups.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.005 | 0.002 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.008 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".