Chinese patent medicines, namely WWSC, PWC, WFCT, and KFXS, combined with Western medicines, show improved effectiveness in treating Helicobacter pylori-related gastric ulcers.
A comprehensive search was conducted to identify randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that examined the effectiveness of Chinese patent medicines (CPMs) in combination with conventional Western medicines (WMs) in treating patients with H pylori-related gastric ulcers. Various sources were used for this search from their inception up to May 2023. The methodological quality of the RCTs was then measured using the Cochrane risk of bias assessment tool. Using R version 4.2.3 and Stata version 15.1 software, a pairwise network meta-analysis was performed.
The analysis found a total of 35 studies involving 4667 patients and 11 different CPMs. The results demonstrated that the combination of CPM and WM was more effective than the WM regimen alone. Certain combinations, specifically WWSC combined with WM, PWC combined with WM, WFCT combined with WM, and KFXS combined with WM, proved to have superior results in enhancing clinical outcomes and mitigating gastric ulcer recurrence rates, improving the H. pylori eradication rate, controlling certain bodily levels, and reducing the incidence of adverse events, respectively.
