%0 Journal Article
%T Effectiveness of Chinese herbal medicine in treating liver fibrosis: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials
%A Fan Cheung
%A Yibin Feng
%A Ning Wang
%A Man-Fung Yuen
%A Yao Tong
%A Vivian Wong
%J Chinese Medicine
%D 2012
%I BioMed Central
%R 10.1186/1749-8546-7-5
%X Databases including MEDLINE, AMED, EMBASE, The Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, TCMOnline, Chinese Biomedical Literature Database, and Chinese Medical Current Contents were searched up to March 2011. Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) involving LF patients receiving CHM, Western medicine, combined CHM and Western medicine compared with placebo, Western medicine or no intervention were included. LF markers including serum hyaluronic acid (HA), laminin (LN), procollagen type III (PC-III), type IV collagen (IV-C), matrix metalloproteinase (MMP), and tissue inhibitors of metalloproteinase (TIMP) were measured as primary outcomes. Liver biochemistry, including alanine aminotransferase (ALT) and aspartarte aminotransferase (AST), and improvement of related clinical symptoms were measured as secondary outcomes. Risk of bias of allocation sequence, allocation concealment, blinding, incomplete outcome data, selective outcome reporting, and other biases were assessed.Twenty-three RCTs with 2123 participants were analyzed in subgroups of types of comparison and study quality. Fifteen studies were graded as good quality. CHM alone and combined with Western medicine showed significant improvements in HA, LN, PC-III and IV-C compared with Western medicine alone. However, there were no significant differences observed between CHM and placebo treatments.The current inconclusive results in determining the effectiveness of CHM treatment on LF, due to the poor methodological quality and high heterogeneity of the studies, suggests that large RCTs using standardized Chinese medicine syndrome diagnosis and CHM formulae with longer follow-up are required for further evaluation.Liver fibrosis (LF), as a result of wound-healing response to recurrent liver injury, is thought to be an early reversible stage of liver cirrhosis [1]. It is characterized by the formation of fibrotic scar tissue with abnormal accumulation of fibroblasts and
%U http://www.cmjournal.org/content/7/1/5