In order to systematically evaluate the efficacy of traditional Chinese medicine in the treatment of Alzheimer's disease. We collected randomized controlled (RCT) clinical trials of traditional Chinese medicine in the treatment of Alzheimer's disease published from the establishment of the database to December 2022. The databases included CNKI, WanFang Data, VIP, Pubmed, Embase, Cochrane Library. Researchers with different research processes independently completed the meta-analysis of the extracted data using RevMan5.3 literature management software. Resultly, a total of 1973 articles were retrieved by searching various databases, and 29 articles were finally included. The total sample size was 2418 cases, 1140 cases in the Chinese medicine treatment group and 1278 cases in the western medicine control group. Compared with the western medicine control group, the MMSE score [MD=1.43 95%CI (0.79, 2.07), P<0.05], HDS score [MD=2.79 95%CI (1.23, 4.34), P=0.0004] and effective rate [RR=1.25 95%CI (1.10, 1.40), P<0.05] in the Chinese medicine treatment group were increased. The ADAS-Cog score of the Chinese medicine treatment group [MD=-2.38 95%CI (-4.44, -0.31), P<0.05] was lower than that of the western medicine control group; the adverse reactions in the Chinese medicine treatment group were lower than those in the western medicine control group [RR=0.21 95%CI (0.07, 0.64), P<0.05]. The ADL score of the Chinese medicine treatment group [MD=-3.99 95%CI ( -8.38, 0.41), P=0.08] was not statistically significant compared with the western medicine control group. In conclusion, according to the results of the analysis, the treatment with traditional Chinese medicine can improve the symptoms of patients with Alzheimer's disease and improve the clinical efficacy of patients. The therapeutic effect is better than that of western medicine. No obvious adverse reactions were observed, and the safety was significantly higher than that of western medicine. However, due to the limited number of documents and the limited retrieval process, the quality of methodology is generally low when researchers analyze the data. Therefore, researchers also need large-scale, high-quality research to further verify these results.

Tao Shan, Li Yan, Wang Hui. Meta-analysis of the Efficacy of Traditional Chinese Medicine in the Treatment of Alzheimer's Disease. International Journal of Frontiers in Medicine (2023), Vol. 5, Issue 10: 118-126. https://doi.org/10.25236/IJFM.2023.051019.

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