The University of Southampton
University of Southampton Institutional Repository

Comparison of effectiveness and safety between granules and decoction of Chinese herbal medicine: a systematic review of randomised clinical trials

Comparison of effectiveness and safety between granules and decoction of Chinese herbal medicine: a systematic review of randomised clinical trials
Comparison of effectiveness and safety between granules and decoction of Chinese herbal medicine: a systematic review of randomised clinical trials
Background: the clinical use of Chineseherbal medicine granules is gradually increasing. However, there is still no systematicreview comparing the effectiveness and safety of granules with the more traditional method of herbaldecoctions.

Method: a literature search was conducted using China National Knowledge Infrastructure Databases (CNKI), Chinese Science and Technology Periodical Database (VIP), China Biomedical Database web (CBM), Wanfang Database, PubMed, and the Cochrane Library until March 10, 2011. Clinical controlled trials (CCTs) including randomized trials (RCTs) comparing the effectiveness and safety between Chineseherbal medicine granules and decoction were included. Two authors conducted the literature searches, and extracted data independently. The assessment of methodological quality of RCTs was based on the risk of bias from the Cochrane Handbook, and the main outcome data of trials were analyzed by using RevMan 5.0 software. Risk ratio (RR) or mean difference (MD) with a 95% confidence interval (CI) were used as effect measure.

Results: 56 clinicaltrials (n = 9748) including 42 RCTs and 14 CCTs were included, and all trials were conducted in China and published in Chinese literature. 40 types of diseases and 15 syndromes of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) were reported. Granules were provided by pharmaceutical companies in 13 trials. The included RCTs were of generally low methodological quality: 7 trials reported adequate randomization methods, and 2 of these reported allocation concealment. 10 trials used blinding, of which 5 trials used placebo which were delivered double blind (blinded participants and practitioners). 98.2% (55/56) of studies showed that there was no significant statistical difference between granules and decoctions of Chineseherbal medicine for their effectiveness. No severe adverse effects in either group were reported.

Conclusions: due to the poor methodological quality of most of the included trials, it is not possible to reach a definitive conclusion whether both Chineseherbal medicine granules and decoctions have the same degree of effectiveness and safety in clinical practice, but this preliminary evidence supports the continued use of granules in clinical practice and research. Standardization of granules and further more rigorous pharmacological, toxicological and clinical studies are needed to demonstrate the equivalence with decoctions
0378-8741
555-567
Luo, Hui
8714682c-b7ba-4537-a1ae-10dc979a0960
Li, Qing
66d3ba1a-5f9b-4a2c-a4dc-065699fe80a3
Flower, Andrew
5256a2c8-6e74-49be-acc8-463ed3c18c6a
Lewith, George
0fc483fa-f17b-47c5-94d9-5c15e65a7625
Liu, Jianping
4699004b-2872-49f2-b2f9-f90a061a29db
Luo, Hui
8714682c-b7ba-4537-a1ae-10dc979a0960
Li, Qing
66d3ba1a-5f9b-4a2c-a4dc-065699fe80a3
Flower, Andrew
5256a2c8-6e74-49be-acc8-463ed3c18c6a
Lewith, George
0fc483fa-f17b-47c5-94d9-5c15e65a7625
Liu, Jianping
4699004b-2872-49f2-b2f9-f90a061a29db

Luo, Hui, Li, Qing, Flower, Andrew, Lewith, George and Liu, Jianping (2012) Comparison of effectiveness and safety between granules and decoction of Chinese herbal medicine: a systematic review of randomised clinical trials. Journal of Ethnopharmacology, 140 (3), 555-567. (doi:10.1016/j.jep.2012.01.031). (PMID:22343092)

Record type: Article

Abstract

Background: the clinical use of Chineseherbal medicine granules is gradually increasing. However, there is still no systematicreview comparing the effectiveness and safety of granules with the more traditional method of herbaldecoctions.

Method: a literature search was conducted using China National Knowledge Infrastructure Databases (CNKI), Chinese Science and Technology Periodical Database (VIP), China Biomedical Database web (CBM), Wanfang Database, PubMed, and the Cochrane Library until March 10, 2011. Clinical controlled trials (CCTs) including randomized trials (RCTs) comparing the effectiveness and safety between Chineseherbal medicine granules and decoction were included. Two authors conducted the literature searches, and extracted data independently. The assessment of methodological quality of RCTs was based on the risk of bias from the Cochrane Handbook, and the main outcome data of trials were analyzed by using RevMan 5.0 software. Risk ratio (RR) or mean difference (MD) with a 95% confidence interval (CI) were used as effect measure.

Results: 56 clinicaltrials (n = 9748) including 42 RCTs and 14 CCTs were included, and all trials were conducted in China and published in Chinese literature. 40 types of diseases and 15 syndromes of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) were reported. Granules were provided by pharmaceutical companies in 13 trials. The included RCTs were of generally low methodological quality: 7 trials reported adequate randomization methods, and 2 of these reported allocation concealment. 10 trials used blinding, of which 5 trials used placebo which were delivered double blind (blinded participants and practitioners). 98.2% (55/56) of studies showed that there was no significant statistical difference between granules and decoctions of Chineseherbal medicine for their effectiveness. No severe adverse effects in either group were reported.

Conclusions: due to the poor methodological quality of most of the included trials, it is not possible to reach a definitive conclusion whether both Chineseherbal medicine granules and decoctions have the same degree of effectiveness and safety in clinical practice, but this preliminary evidence supports the continued use of granules in clinical practice and research. Standardization of granules and further more rigorous pharmacological, toxicological and clinical studies are needed to demonstrate the equivalence with decoctions

This record has no associated files available for download.

More information

e-pub ahead of print date: 9 February 2012
Published date: 10 April 2012
Organisations: Primary Care & Population Sciences

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 338186
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/338186
ISSN: 0378-8741
PURE UUID: c12e8efe-d38a-4bb7-8746-113077c8444a

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 11 May 2012 10:49
Last modified: 14 Mar 2024 11:02

Export record

Altmetrics

Contributors

Author: Hui Luo
Author: Qing Li
Author: Andrew Flower
Author: George Lewith
Author: Jianping Liu

Download statistics

Downloads from ePrints over the past year. Other digital versions may also be available to download e.g. from the publisher's website.

View more statistics

Atom RSS 1.0 RSS 2.0

Contact ePrints Soton: eprints@soton.ac.uk

ePrints Soton supports OAI 2.0 with a base URL of http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/cgi/oai2

This repository has been built using EPrints software, developed at the University of Southampton, but available to everyone to use.

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue without changing your settings, we will assume that you are happy to receive cookies on the University of Southampton website.

×