Radix Sophorae flavescentis versus no intervention or placebo for chronic hepatitis B.

CONCLUSIONS: The included trials lacked data on health-related quality of life, hepatitis B-related mortality, and hepatitis B-related morbidity. The effects of Radix Sophorae flavescentis on all-cause mortality and on the proportion of participants with serious adverse events and adverse events considered 'not to be serious' remain unclear. We advise caution in interpreting results showing that Radix Sophorae flavescentis reduced the proportion of people with detectable HBV-DNA and detectable HBeAg because the trials reporting on these outcomes are at high risk of bias and both outcomes are non-validated surrogate outcomes. We were unable to obtain information on the design and conduct of a large number of trials; therefore, we were deterred from including them in our review. Undisclosed funding may influence trial results and may lead to poor trial design. Given the wide usage of Radix Sophorae flavescentis, we need large, unbiased, high-quality placebo-controlled randomised trials in which patient-centred outcomes are assessed.
PMID: 30941748 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]

Source: Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews - April 2, 2019 Category: General Medicine Authors: Liang N, Kong Z, Ma SS, Lu CL, Yang M, Feng LD, Shen C, Diao RH, Cui LJ, Lu XY, Nikolova D, Jakobsen JC, Gluud C, Liu JP Tags: Cochrane Database Syst Rev Source Type: research