An updated systematic review and meta-analysis of efficacy and safety of Chinese herbal medicine for treating atopic dermatitis

Abstract

Background

This systematic review evaluated the Chinese herbal medicine (CHM) for treating atopic dermatitis (AD).

Methods

PubMed, EMBASE, the Cochrane library, the Wanfang database, and China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) were searched for relevant randomized controlled trials (RCTs) from inception to December 2021. Overall recovery rate, disease/symptom severity scoring, quality of life (QoL), recurrence rate, and incidence of adverse events (AEs) were evaluated. STATA SE 14.0 software was used for statistical analysis.

Results

17 RCTs involving 1624 patients were eligible. CHM was associated with a higher overall recovery rate (risk ratio [RR] = 1.15, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.05, 1.26, p = .003) and decreased recurrence rate (odds ratio [OR] = 0.19, 95% CI: 0.07, 0.55, p = .002), both confirmed by sensitivity analyses. CHM could decrease scoring atopic dermatitis index (MD = −0.61, 95% CI: −1.12, −0.11, p = .017), however, sensitivity analysis revealed non-robustness. No significant differences were found between the CHM and the control group in Eczema Area and Severity Index, QoL, and the incidence of AEs.

Conclusions

CHM was effective for treating AD as it could improve the overall recovery rate and decrease the recurrence rate. More studies are required to validate the potential of CHM on disease/symptoms severity and QoL.

Keywords:

• Atopic dermatitis
• atopic eczema
• Chinese herbal medicine
• meta-analysis

Acknowledgment

We thank the Young Talent Support Project of Guangzhou Association for Science and Technology, and Young Elite Scientists Sponsorship Program by CAST (YESS20220609) for their support.

Ethical approval

This article is a meta-analysis. The data come from published articles and does not require ethical approval.

Author contributions

(I) Conception and design: Jinjing Jia; (II) Administrative support: Dacan Chen; (III) Provision of study materials or patients: Junfeng Liu, Xiumei Mo; (IV) Collection and assembly of data: Jinjing Jia; (V) Data analysis and interpretation: Jinjing Jia, Sherman X. Gu; (VI) Manuscript writing: (all authors); (VII) Final approval of manuscript: (all authors).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (82274521), Basic and Applied Basic Research Project of Guangzhou (2023A04J0449) and Research Fund for Bajian Talents of Guangdong Provincial Hospital of Chinese Medicine (BJ2022KY06).