Chinese Medicine
for Parkinson's Disease: A Meta-Analysis
Idiopathic Parkinson disease (PD) is a common
neurodegenerative disease that seriously hinders limb activities and affects
patients' lives. We performed a meta-analysis aiming to systematically review
and quantitatively synthesize the efficacy and safety of traditional Chinese
medicine (TCM) as an adjunct therapy for clinical PD patients. An electronic search was conducted in PubMed, Cochrane
Controlled Trials Register, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, Chinese
Scientific Journals Database and Wanfang data to identify randomized trials
evaluating TCM adjuvant therapy versus conventional treatment. The change from
baseline of the Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale score (UPDRS) was used
to estimate the effectiveness of the therapies. Twenty-seven
articles involving 2314 patients from 1999 to 2013 were included. Potentially
marked improvements were shown in UPDRS I (SMD 0.68, 95%CI 0.38, 0.98), II (WMD
2.41, 95%CI 1.66, 2.62), III (WMD 2.45, 95%CI 2.03, 2.86), IV (WMD 0.32, 95%CI
0.15, 049) and I-IV total scores (WMD 6.18, 95%CI 5.06, 7.31) in patients with
TCM plus dopamine replacement therapy (DRT) compared to DRT alone. Acupuncture
add-on therapy was markedly beneficial for improving the UPDRS I-IV total score
of PD patients (WMD 10.96, 95%CI 5.85, 16.07). However, TCM monotherapy did not
improve the score. The effectiveness seemed to be more obvious in PD patients
with longer adjunct durations. TCM adjuvant therapy was generally safe and well
tolerated.
Although the data were limited by
methodological flaws in many studies, the evidence indicates the potential
superiority of TCM as an alternative therapeutic for PD treatment and justifies
further high-quality studies.
Source： Zhang G,
Xiong N,
Zhang Z,
Liu L,
Huang J,
Yang J,
Wu J,
Lin Z,
Wang T. Effectiveness
of traditional chinese medicine as an adjunct therapy for Parkinson's disease:
a systematic review and meta-analysis. PLoS One.
2015 Mar 10;10(3):e0118498.
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