Is Chinese Herbal Medicine Effective for Elderly Isolated Systolic Hypertension? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

• 来源期刊: 中国结合医学杂志（英文版）
• 年，卷（期）: 2017,（4）
• 页码范围: 298-305
• 页数: 8页
• 语种: 英文
• DOI: 10.1007/s11655-016-2257-z

摘要

Objective:To study the efficacy of Chinese medicine (CM) on isolated systolic hypertension.Methods:Seven electronic databases were searched for randomized controlled trials (RCTs) published until August 2015.Subgroup analyses and meta-analysis were performed to assess the efficacy and safety of the included studies.Results:A total of 24 studies,including 2,096 patients (1,058 patients in the intervention group and 1,038 in the control group),were evaluated in the final analysis.Compared with a conventional therapy used alone,CM as additional intervention was more effective on systolic blood pressure [mean difference (MD)=-0.66,95％ confidence interval (CI)=(-0.97,-0.36),P＜0.00001] and significantly diminished the pulse pressure [MD=-7.49,CI=(-12.69,-2.29),P＜0.00001].However it showed no additional benefit on diastolic blood pressure [MD=1.16,CI=(0.02,2.29),P=0.87].Adverse events were not explicitly reported in most RCTs.Conclusions:CM might be a promising approach for the elderly with isolated systolic hypertension,while the evidence for CM employed alone was insufficient.Considering the inherent limitations of the included studies,larger high-quality RCTs with extensive follow-up should be performed to validate our findings in the future.