Is Chinese herbal medicine effective for elderly isolated systolic hypertension? A systematic review and meta-analysis / 中国结合医学杂志

ABSTRACT

<p><b>OBJECTIVE</b>To study the efficacy of Chinese medicine (CM) on isolated systolic hypertension.</p><p><b>METHODS</b>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.</p><p><b>RESULTS</b>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.</p><p><b>CONCLUSIONS</b>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.</p>