Effectiveness of Huaiqihuang combined with conventional western medicine in the treatment of primary nephrotic syndrome in children:a Meta-analysis

Objective To evaluate the efficacy and safety of Huaiqihuang combined with conventional western medicine in the treatment of primary nephrotic syndrome in children.Methods Wesystematicallysearched the VIP, CNKI, SinoMed, PubMed, Web of Science, EMBASE for relevant clinical randomized controlled trials(RCTs) from February 2002 to April 2017.Two reviewers independently selected the studies, extracted the information, and assessed the trials quality.Serum IgG, IgA, IgM, CD4, serum albumin levels and 24-h urinary protein were analyzed in children with primary nephrotic syndrome using stata12.1 Mean differences for continuous variables,with their 95%confidence interval were calculated.Results A total of 8 RCTs involving 412 primary nephrotic syndrome patients were included. Five articlesof thosereported the changes inSerum IgG, IgA, IgM. Six articlesreported the changes inCD4.Three articlesreported the changes in 24-h urinary protein. The pooled results showed that there was significant difference in IgG, IgA, CD4 and plasma albumin levels in patients with primary nephrotic syndrome between combined group and conventional western medicine group, butthere was no significant difference in IgM and 24-h urine protein.Conclusions There arecontroversies on the effect ofHuaiqihuang on primary nephrotic syndrome in children.In our study, Huaiqihuang combined with conventional therapy can significantly improve the immune function of patients.As a adjuvant therapy almost has no adverse effect.However, the above conclusion should be further confirmed by conducting more large-scale and well-designed RCTs due to the limited quantity and quality of the included studies.