Safflower yellow for the treatment of cerebral infarction: a systematic review
LI Sheng1, 2, DENG Qiaoling3, RUAN Xiaolan4, LIU Xiaoping2, HUANG Jingyu2, MENG Xiangyu2
1. Biological Repositories, Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University, Wuhan 430071, China; 2. Center for Evidence-based and Translational Medicine, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430071, China; 3. Department of Clinical Laboratory, Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University, Wuhan 430071, China; 4. Department of Hematology, Renmin Hospital, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430060, China
Abstract：Objective To evaluate the efficacy and safety of the safflower yellow injection in the treatment of cerebral infarction. Methods Related data published by December 2015 was retrieved from PubMed, EMBASE, the Cochrane Library, VIP, CNKI, CBM and WangFang databases regarding randomized controlled tests (RCTs) about the safflower yellow injection in treating cerebral infarction. At the same time,related literature was retrieved manually. Two reviewers independently selected studies, extracted the data and assessed the risk of bias according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Meta-analysis of the included RCTs was performed with software RevMan5.3. Results A total of 38 RCTs involving 3454 patients were included. The results of meta analysis showed that(1)in terms of total efficiency, the safflower yellow injection combined with conventional treatment group was better than any other control group, and the difference was statistically significant (P<0.05); (2)the safflower yellow injection could more effectively improve the National Institute of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS)than control groups, and the difference was statistically significant [MD=-3.14, 95%CI(-4.04,-2.24),P<0.01]; (3)the average TCM syndrome score of the curative effect in the safflower yellow injection group was lower than in control groups[MD=-3.75,95%CI (-5.41,-2.09), P<0.01];(4)the safflower yellow injection was more effective than control groups in the improvement of blood rheology, blood coagulation indexes and serum inflammatory markers (P<0.05); (5)drug adverse reactions and side effects were few. Conclusions Current evidence shows that the safflower yellow injection can improve the effect of conventional treatment of cerebral infarction,and is safe. Therefore, the safflower yellow injection combined with conventional treatment is a preferred option. Considering the quantity and quality of the included studies, clinical trials of better quality are needed.
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2017, Vol. 28 
