Effect of external therapies of traditional Chinese medicine on constipation in patients with CRF: A meta-analysis

Yu Wu; Qisu Ying; Yajing He; Xiangcheng Xie; Xiao Yuan; Ming Wang; Xiao Fei; Xiu Yang

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0291968

Effect of external therapies of traditional Chinese medicine on constipation in patients with CRF: A meta-analysis

PLoS One. 2023 Oct 5;18(10):e0291968. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0291968. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Yu Wu¹, Qisu Ying¹, Yajing He¹, Xiangcheng Xie¹, Xiao Yuan², Ming Wang¹, Xiao Fei¹, Xiu Yang¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Nephrology, Affiliated Hangzhou First People's Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou, China.
² Department of Nursing, Affiliated Hangzhou First People's Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou, China.

Abstract

Objective: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the curative effect of external therapies of traditional Chinese medicine on constipation in patients with chronic renal failure and to provide scientific theoretical basis for clinical practice.

Method: We searched the English database of PubMed, EMBASE, the Cochrane Library and the Web of Science and Chinese database of CNKI, Wan fang database, VIP Database and China Biomedical Literature Database up to December 2022. Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) involving constipation in patients with CRF that compared external therapies of traditional Chinese medicine and routine treatment to routine treatment were eligible for the analysis. A meta-analysis of the outcome indicators including total efficiency, weekly defecation times, defecation time, defecation difficulty score, patient-assessment of constipation quality of life and adverse events of treatment were performed. The analysis was performed by using Review Manager version 5.3.

Result: A total of 23 studies were included, with 1764 patients. Meta-analysis results showed that compared with the control group, the test group could significantly increase weekly defecation times(MD = 0.94, 95%CI(0.70, 1.18), Z = 7.74, P < 0.00001), reduce defecation time(MD = -2.92, 95%CI(-3.69, -2.16), Z = 7.49, P < 0.00001), reduce defecation difficulty score(MD = -1.92, 95%CI(-2.45, -1.39), Z = 7.11, P < 0.00001), improve the quality of life in patients with constipation(MD = -7.57, 95%CI(-10.23, -4.91), Z = 5.58, P < 0.00001) and obtain a higher total effective rate of treatment(OR = 4.53, 95%CI(3.27, 6.29), Z = 9.07, P < 0.00001). In terms of safety, there was no statistical significance in the incidence of adverse events between two groups(OR = 0.35, 95%CI(0.04, 2.95), Z = 0.96, P = 0.34).

Conclusion: The combination of external therapies of traditional Chinese medicine and routine treatment could achieve an excellent curative effect, and there was no specific adverse event. However because of the limited level of current evidence, more high-quality trials are needed in the future.5.

Copyright: © 2023 Wu et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Publication types

Meta-Analysis
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

China
Constipation / drug therapy
Humans
Kidney Failure, Chronic*
Medicine, Chinese Traditional
Renal Insufficiency, Chronic*

Grants and funding

This study was supported by Grants from Zhejiang Provincial Traditional Chinese Medicine Science and Technology Project (2021ZB223). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.