Traditional Chinese medicine therapies, like acupuncture and moxibustion, effectively alleviate irritable bowel syndrome with diarrhea symptoms, and reduce recurrence rates.
Systematic Review Chinese Medicine Diarrhoea Irritable Bowel Syndrome
Adhering to the guidelines for systematic reviews, multiple databases including PubMed and Cochrane Library, and several Chinese databases were thoroughly searched. The focus was randomized controlled trials that compared traditional Chinese external therapies with western medicine for irritable bowel syndrome with diarrhea up until the end of 2021. Two authors were independently responsible for screening, data extraction and study assessment. Study quality assessment involved both the Jadad scale and Cochrane Collaborative's risk of bias tool. Meta-analysis was performed on the data collated using Review Manager software.
The gathered data revealed that of the twenty-one studies examined, including a total of 1,862 subjects, acupuncture and moxibustion were the most prevalent external therapies. The results of the meta-analysis indicated that in comparison to the control group, the experimental group demonstrated marked improvement. Notably, the experimental group had superior clinical effectiveness rates, better clinical cure rates, and reduced recurrence. Additionally, there was significant improvement in irritable bowel syndrome related quality of life within the experimental group. Despite these promising results, the publication bias of the included studies was noted as a potential limitation.
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