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Chinese herbal medicine tends to improve the quality of life of patients suffering from allergic rhinitis.
2018 Allergy, Asthma & Immunology Research Chinese Herbal Medicine to Treat Allergic Rhinitis: Evidence From a Meta-Analysis Zhang X, Lan F, Zhang Y, Zhang L
Systematic Review Hay Fever
The researchers examined randomized clinical trials (RCTs) to understand the effect of Chinese herbal medicine (CHM) on allergic rhinitis (AR). They conducted a comprehensive search of PubMed, Medline, and Springer databases till March 2017, specifically looking for trials that compared CHM's effectiveness to a placebo in treating AR. They evaluated total nasal symptoms and quality of life, also performing sensitivity and subgroup analyses to further explore the source of heterogeneity in the trial results.
The study included eleven RCTs in the meta-analysis, which revealed significant heterogeneity among them. This means that the data from these individual studies varied a lot, prompting the researchers to use a random effects model to consolidate the data. While CHM did not make a notable difference in alleviating symptoms like an itchy nose, sneezing, or total nasal symptoms, it did result in a noticeable improvement in the overall quality of life of the AR patients.