title: Efficacy of Chinese Herbal Medicine as an Adjunctive Therapy on in-Hospital Mortality in Patients with Acute Kidney Injury: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.
abstract: Objective. We aimed to systematically assess the efficacy of Chinese herbal medicine (CHM) as an adjunctive therapy on in-hospital mortality in patients with acute kidney injury (AKI). Methods. We did a systematic review of articles published in any language up until Jun 23, 2015, by searching PubMed, Embase, the Cochrane Library, CBM, and CNKI. We included all RCTs that compared outcomes of patients with AKI taking CHM plus Western treatment (WT) with those taking WT alone. We applied Cochrane risk-of-bias tool to assess the methodological quality of the included trials. Results. Of 832 citations, 15 studies involving 966 patients met inclusion criteria. The methodological quality was assessed with unclear risk of bias. In the primary outcome of meta-analysis, pooled outcome of in-hospital mortality showed that patients randomly assigned to CHM treatment group were associated with low risk of in-hospital mortality compared with those randomly assigned to WT alone (RR = 0.41; 95% CI = 0.24 to 0.71; P = 0.001). Conclusions. CHM as an adjunctive therapy is associated with a decreased risk of in-hospital mortality compared with WT in patients with AKI. Further studies with high quality and large sample size are needed to verify our conclusions.
authors.affiliation: Emergency Department, Affiliated Zhongshan Hospital of Dalian University, Dalian No. 6, Jiefang Street, Zhongshan District, Dalian, Liaoning 116001, China; Dalian Medical University, Lvshunkou District, Dalian, Liaoning 116044, China.
authors.forename: Tuo
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: College of Basic Medicine, Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine, Nanjing 210000, China.
authors.forename: Libin
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Zhan
authors.affiliation: Emergency Department, Affiliated Zhongshan Hospital of Dalian University, Dalian No. 6, Jiefang Street, Zhongshan District, Dalian, Liaoning 116001, China.
authors.forename: Zhiwei
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Fan
authors.affiliation: Emergency Department, Affiliated Zhongshan Hospital of Dalian University, Dalian No. 6, Jiefang Street, Zhongshan District, Dalian, Liaoning 116001, China.
authors.forename: Lizhi
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Bai
authors.affiliation: Emergency Department, Affiliated Zhongshan Hospital of Dalian University, Dalian No. 6, Jiefang Street, Zhongshan District, Dalian, Liaoning 116001, China.
authors.forename: Yi
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Song
authors.affiliation: Emergency Department, Affiliated Zhongshan Hospital of Dalian University, Dalian No. 6, Jiefang Street, Zhongshan District, Dalian, Liaoning 116001, China.
authors.forename: Xiaoguang
authors.identifier: 0000-0001-8741-9928
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Lu