ArticleAnnals of translational medicine2018
Comparison of the efficacy of dispensing granules with traditional decoction: a systematic review and meta-analysis.
Article in Annals of translational medicine, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Impact of Different Dosage Forms of Orally Administered Chinese Herbal Medicine on Treatment and Adverse Effect Estimates in Randomized Controlled Trials: A Meta-Epidemiological Study.Journal of evidence-based medicine · 2026Pooled it
- Reconciling Methodological Paradigms Toward More Accurate Evaluation of Personalized Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) Intervention in Standardized Trials: Introducing the TRIPLE-TCM Trial Framework.Therapeutics and clinical risk management · 2025Article
- Efficacy and Safety Comparisons of Lingshu Granule versus Decoction in Polycystic Ovary Syndrome Patients with Insulin Resistance: A Multicenter Randomized Controlled Dose-Finding Trial Protocol.International journal of women's health · 2025Article
- LC-MS based strategy for chemical profiling and quantification of dispensing granules ofHeliyon · 2024Article
- Thermodynamics driving phytochemical self-assembly morphological change and efficacy enhancement originated from single and co-decoction of traditional chinese medicine.Journal of nanobiotechnology · 2022Article
- Patients' and clinicians' expectations on integrative medicine Services for Diabetes: a focus group study.BMC complementary medicine and therapies · 2020Article
- A Comprehensive and Rapid Quality Evaluation Method of Traditional Chinese Medicine Decoction by Integrating UPLC-QTOF-MS and UFLC-QQQ-MS and its Application.Molecules (Basel, Switzerland) · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundDispensing granules have been developed for about 20 years. However, whether they are as effective as the traditional decoction kept unclear. This systematic review and meta-analysis was made to assess the efficacy of dispensing granules compared with traditional decoction.
methodsWe searched four databases since their inception to 9th September in 2016. Two authors independently identified trials, extracted data and assessed risk of bias with Cochrane Reviewer's Handbook 5.0. We conducted meta-analysis with RevMan 5.1.0 software for eligible and appropriate trials.
resultsIn the end, 7,035 participants from 51 randomized controlled trials (RCTs) which compared dispensing granules with traditional decoction were included in this systematic review. There were 33 different kinds of diseases for investigation, of which 8 RCTs observed common cold, 4 RCTs observed migraine. For rheumatoid arthritis, insomnia and hypertension, there were 3 RCTs reported respectively. The last RCTs reported different kinds of diseases in one or two trials. The majority of trials were in low methodological quality. Thirty-eight (74.5%) RCTs showed that the efficacy of dispensing granules were similar with traditional decoction, 6 (11.8%) RCTs reported that the therapeutic efficacy of dispensing granules were significantly better than traditional decoction. We conducted meta-analysis for 4 trials investigating patients with migraine. The results showed that dispensing granules reduced headache frequency by about 1.03 attacks per month as compared to traditional decoction. No evidence was found in terms of migraine intensity and duration.
conclusionsThe low quality of RCTs and conflicting results made it difficult to draw a definite conclusion. In the future, it needs much more evidence to explore the efficacy and safety of dispensing granules. N-of-1 trials and fuzzy comprehensive evaluation methods may be better choices for assessing the efficacy of them than RCTs.
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