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Chinese herbal medicine’s value in improving atopic dermatitis inconclusive

Chinese herbal medicine significantly improved atopic dermatitis symptoms and was well tolerated among patients, although poor study quality challenged the validity of those conclusions, according to a recent systematic review.

Researchers in Australia and China studied the clinical evidence of the efficacy and safety of oral Chinese herbal medicine (CHM) as treatment for atopic dermatitis (AD) by searching databases, including CINAHL, Cochrane Library, Embase, ProQuest, PubMed, Science Direct, Scopus, Web of Science, VIP Database for Chinese Technical Periodicals and China National Knowledge Infrastructure from their inception through 2011. English/Chinese randomized control trials were included.

The search yielded 1,014 studies, with 281 articles selected for further evaluation. Seven randomized control trials (one comparing CHM and Western medicine [WM] with WM alone; six comparing CHM with placebo) were included for analysis. Six studies underwent meta-analysis and included 432 AD patients.

In the study of CHM and WM, the combination was significantly superior to WM alone (P<.00001). Significant treatment efficacy with CHM was displayed in three placebo-controlled trials (P<.00001), while significantly reduced concurrent therapy was shown in two trials with CHM (P=.024). There were no reports of safety profile abnormalities or severe adverse events.

“When compared with placebo, CHM revealed significant improvement in erythema (P<.00001), surface damage (P<.0001), pruritus (P<.0001), sleep scores (P<.00001) and quality of life (P<.05),” the researchers wrote.

“There are insufficient data to show that CHM treatment in combination with WM treatment is more effective than WM treatment alone,” the researchers concluded. “The meta-analysis showed significant improvement in symptom severity by CHM compared to placebo. However, the poor quality and heterogeneity of studies do not allow for valid conclusions. Additional studies addressing the methodologic issues are warranted to determine the therapeutic benefit of Chinese herbal medicine for AD.”