The Effectiveness of Cupping in Iranian Researches: A Systematic Review of Animal and Human Studies

Cupping has a long history in Iran which is one of the most widely used methods in prevention and treatment of diseases in Persian medicine. However, it still has many opponents in the Iranian conventional medical community. So, this systematic review study was conducted to survey the scientific and authoritative articles related to wet and dry cupping that have been done in Iran and the diseases for which Iranian researchers have suggested cupping. In general, the effect of wet and dry cupping on various kinds of pain (e.g. headache, musculoskeletal pain, postpartum pain, etc.), as well as the effect of wet cupping on hematological and biochemical factors of blood were among the most common studies. Also, persistence of therapeutic effects of wet and dry cupping on various diseases was satisfactory. The results of this study showed that wet and dry cupping, even alone, are effective in the treatment of many diseases, and if the objections to the use of these two treatments are reduced, more extensive and high-quality researches in this regard will be done.