Oral Chinese herbal medicine versus placebo for psoriasis vulgaris: A systematic review

Abstract

Objectives: Psoriasis is a chronic inflammatory skin disorder and the efficacy and safety of Chinese herbal medicine (CHM) treatments is unclear. This review evaluates oral CHM for psoriasis vulgaris clinical trial evidence.

Design: The Cochrane Library, PubMed, EMBASE, CINAHL, AMED, CBM, CNKI, CQVIP and Wanfang databases were searched from inception to June 2015. Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) of oral CHM compared to placebo data were included and analysed using Review Manager 5.2.

Results: Seven studies were included, no study utilised identical CHM intervention. Four studies data were subgrouped (decoction or capsule/pill) and pooled in meta-analysis to evaluate treatment effective rate for PASI60 or above (RR: 2.74 [0.92, 8.21] I²=65%). Another five studies were subgrouped and evaluated for PASI score change, (MD −7.00 [−10.74, −3.27] I²=98%). Only one study presented Dermatology Life Quality Index data, which favoured CHM (MD: −4.08 [−7.56, −0.60]). Two studies presented data on psoriasis-related inflammatory cell-signalling protein tumour necrosis factor-a (TNF-a) (MD: −4.92 [−5.31, −4.53]). No serious adverse events were reported.

Conclusion: While CHMs appear to be safe and may have benefit for psoriasis, variation between CHM interventions, outcome measures and the quality of included studies limit the conclusions of this review. Further rigorous RCTs utilising reliable, validated symptom and QoL outcome measures are recommended.

Keywords:

• Psoriasis
• herb
• random
• control
• trial
• review

Disclosure statement

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of this article

Funding information

Funds are provided by the Guangdong Provincial Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, China and the International Science & Technology Cooperation Programme of China.