Efficacy of Fangji Huangqi Decoction for chronic kidney disease: a Meta-analysis

Objective  To systematically evaluate the clinical efficacy of Fangji Huangqi Decoction (FHD) for chronic kidney disease (CKD).

Methods  The earliest date of randomized controlled trials of FHD in the treatment of CKD from the time of its establishment to December 2022 were searched from the databases of China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), Wanfang, VIP and PubMed. Literature fulfilling the inclusion criteria was screened out for quality assessment and RevMan5.3 software was utilized for extracting and processing the data.

Results  A total of 18 studies with a total of 1391 CKD patients were retrieved. Observation group was superior to control group in terms of higher overall effective rate (RR=1.28, 95%CI: 1.19-1.37, P<0.001). Also observation group was better than control group in improving the levels of serum creatinine (MD=−17.98, 95%CI: −34.32-−1.65, P=0.03), blood urea nitrogen (MD=−1.89, 95%CI: −2.65-−1.14, P<0.001) and 24-hour total urinary protein (MD=−0.81, 95%CI: −1.03-−0.60, P<0.001).

Conclusions  On the basis of western medicine, a co-treatment of FHD can effectively improve the clinical symptoms of CKD patients, reduce proteinuria, protect renal function, delay disease progression and improve clinical efficacy. However, more high-quality larger-sample randomized controlled studies are needed for confirmation in the future.