TABLE 1.
The characteristics of included studies of Chinese herbal medicine for COVID-19.
| Study ID | Sample size (M/F) | Age (year) | The severity (*) of COVID-19 | Type of Chinese herbal medicine | Conventional western therapy (Yes/No) | Course of CHM treatment | Outcomes | Author’s conclusion towards the role of Chinese herbal medicine in the treatment or adjuvant treatment of COVID-19 (positive/negative) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Study type 1: randomized controlled trials (10, 17.24%) | ||||||||
| Yu et al. (2020) | T:82/65, C:89/59 | T:48.27±9.56, C:47.25±8.67 | Non-serious | Chinese patent medicine | Yes | 7 days | ②③⑪⑬ | Positive |
| Duan et al. (2020) | T:39/43, C:23/18 | T:51.99±13.88, C:50.29±13.17 | Non-serious | Chinese patent medicine | Yes | 5 days | ②④⑤⑥⑬ | Positive |
| Sun et al. (2020) | T:17/15, C:11/14 | T:45.4±14.10, C:42.0±11.70 | Non-serious | Chinese patent medicine | Yes | 14 days | ②④⑤⑥⑧⑪ | Positive |
| Fu et al. (2020a) | T:17/15, C:19/14 | T:43.26±7.15, C:43.68±6.45 | Non-serious | Chinese patent medicine | Yes | 10 days | ②⑪⑬ | Positive |
| Fu et al. (2020b) | T:19/18, C:19/17 | T:45.26±7.25, C:44.68±7.45 | Non-serious | Chinese patent medicine | Yes | 15 days | ①②⑬ | Positive |
| Ding et al. (2020) | T:39/12, C:39/10 | T:54.7±21.3, C:50.8±23.5 | T: 46 (non-serious) / 5 (serious), C: 11 (non-serious) / 4 (serious) | Prescribed herbal decoction | Yes | 10 days | ④⑤⑪⑬ | Positive |
| Ye (2020) | T:2/26, C:4/10 | T:53.5–69, C:47–67 | Serious | Prescribed herbal decoction | Yes | 7 days | ②③ | Positive |
| Qiu et al. (2020) | T:13/12, C:14/11 | T: 53.35±18.35, C:51.32±14.62 | Non-serious | Prescribed herbal decoction | Yes | 10 days | ②⑦⑧⑪ | Positive |
| Zhang et al. (2020a) | T:9/13, C:10/13 | T:53.7 ±3.5, C:55.6±4.2 | Non-serious | Prescribed herbal decoction | Yes | 7 days | ⑦⑧⑨⑪⑬ | Positive |
| Wang et al. (2020c) | T:14/10, C:12/11 | T:46.8±14.4, C:51.4±17.6 | Non-serious | Prescribed herbal decoction | Yes | 14 days | ②③⑦⑬ | Positive |
| Study type 2: Non-randomized controlled trial (1, 1.72%) | ||||||||
| Xiao et al. (2020) | T:64/36, C:66/34 | T:60.90±8.70, C:62.20±7.50 | Non-serious | Chinese patent medicine | Yes | 14 days | ⑦⑧⑨⑪⑬ | Positive |
| Study type 3: Retrospective studies with a control group (11, 18.97%) | ||||||||
| Cheng et al. (2020) | T:26/25, C:27/24 | T:55.5±12.3, C:55.8±11.6 | Non-serious | Chinese patent medicine | Yes | 7 days | ②④⑤⑥⑦⑧⑨⑪ | Positive |
| Liu et al. (2020c) | T:21/23, C:16/20 | T:50.73, C:51.75 | T: 37 (non-serious) / 7 (serious), C: 28 (non-serious) / 8 (serious) | Chinese patent medicine | Yes | 7 days | ⑪⑬ | Positive |
| Zhang et al. (2020b) | T:10/12, C:12/10 | T:25–73, C:19–67 | Non-serious | Chinese herbal medicine injection | Yes | 7 days | ⑩⑪⑬ | Positive |
| Li et al. (2020c) | T:15/15, C:13/17 | T:53.600±0.259, C:50.433±0.338 | T: 3 (serious)/27(not reported) , C: 2 (serious)/28(not reported) | Prescribed herbal decoction | Yes | Not reported | ①②⑦⑧⑪⑬ | Positive |
| Yang et al. (2020c) | T:28/23, C: 24/28 | T:61.57±1.84, C:66.35±1.82 | Serious | Prescribed herbal decoction + Chinese herbal medicine injection | Yes | Not reported | ①③⑪⑫⑬ | Positive |
| Qu et al. (2020a) | T:25/15, C:16/14 | T:40.65±8.23, C:39.82±6.40 | Non-serious | Chinese patent medicine | Yes | 10 days | ①⑦⑧⑨⑩⑬ | Positive |
| Xia et al. (2020) | T:17/17, C:6/12 | T:54.18±13.08, C:53.67±12.70 | T: 27 (non-serious) / 7 (serious) , C: 13 (non-serious) / 4 (serious) | Chinese patent medicine + Chinese herbal medicine injection + prescribed herbal decoction | Yes | 5-10 days | ①②③⑦⑪⑫⑬ | Positive |
| Yao et al. (2020) | T:16/5, C:12/9 | T:57.1±14.0, C:62.4±12.3 | Non-serious | Chinese patent medicine | Yes | Not reported | ④⑤⑥⑦ | Positive |
| Shi et al. (2020a) | T:26/23, C:10/8 | T:47.94±14.46, C:46.72±17.40 | T: 41 (non-serious) / 8 (serious) , C: 15 (non-serious) / 3 (serious) | Chinese patent medicine + prescribed herbal decoction | Yes | Not reported | ①②⑪⑫ | Positive |
| Yang et al. (2020a) | T:16/10, C:9/14 | T:50.35±13.37, C:47.17±16.57 | Non-serious | Chinese patent medicine | Yes | 7 days | ②⑩⑪⑬ | Positive |
| Chen et al. (2020) | T:14/20, C:15/19 | T:65.06±10.63, C:64.35±10.34 | Non-serious | Chinese patent medicine | Yes | 7 days | ②④⑤⑥⑦⑧⑨⑪⑫⑬ | Positive |
| Study type 4: Case-series (12, 20.69%) | ||||||||
| Zhang et al. (2020c) | 9/15 | 49.96±12.79 (27-69) | Non-serious | Prescribed herbal decoction | Yes | 6-14 days | NA | Positive |
| Wang et al. (2020d) | 52/46 | 42.70±16.86 | 87 (non-serious) / 11 (serious) | Prescribed herbal decoction | No | 9 days | NA | Positive |
| Xie et al. (2020a) | 8 | 35–79 | Serious | Prescribed herbal decoction | Yes | Not reported | NA | Positive |
| Li et al. (2020d) | 3/3 | 42–79 | Serious | Chinese patent medicine + Chinese herbal medicine injection + prescribed herbal decoction | Yes | Not reported | NA | Positive |
| Ba et al. (2020) | 243/208 | 43–66 | 399 (non-serious) / 46 (serious) | Prescribed herbal decoction | Yes | Not reported | NA | Positive |
| Liu et al. (2020a) | 36 | NR | Not reported | Prescribed herbal decoction | Yes | 14 days | NA | Positive |
| Huang et al. (2020) | 38/33 | 41.3±16.7 | Non-serious | Chinese patent medicine + Chinese herbal medicine injection + prescribed herbal decoction | Yes | Not reported | NA | Positive |
| Xie et al. (2020b) | 27 | 2–68 | Non-serious | Prescribed herbal decoction | Yes | Not reported | NA | Positive |
| Cheng and Li (2020) | 29/25 | 60.1±16.98 (25–95) | Non-serious | Chinese patent medicine | Yes | 8. 0 ± 4. 10 days | NA | Positive |
| Zhou et al. (2020) | 17/23 | 19–68 | Non-serious | Prescribed herbal decoction | Yes | 14 days | NA | Positive |
| Qu et al. (2020b) | 23/17 | 61.2±16.5 (24–79) | Non-serious | Prescribed herbal decoction | Yes | 7 days | NA | Positive |
| Shi et al. (2020c) | 15/25 | 43.9±16.3 (20–94) | 32 (non-serious) / 8 (serious) | Prescribed herbal decoction | Yes | Not reported | NA | Positive |
| Study type 5: Case-reports (24, 41.38%) | ||||||||
| Fu et al. (2020) | 1/1 | 32, 46 | Non-serious | Chinese patent medicine | Yes | 10/14 days | NA | Positive |
| Tian et al. (2020) | 2/3 | 24, 28, 36, 40, 49 | 2 (non-serious) / 3 (serious) | prescribed herbal decoction + Chinese patent medicine | Yes | 9 days | NA | Positive |
| Dong et al. (2020) | 1 M | 56 | Not reported | Prescribed herbal decoction | No | 11 day | NA | Positive |
| Shi et al. (2020b) | 2 M | 45, 48 | Non-serious | Prescribed herbal decoction + Chinese herbal medicine injection | Yes | 7/18 days | NA | Positive |
| Li et al. (2020b) | 1/1 | 35, 36 | 1 (non-serious) / 1 (serious) | Prescribed herbal decoction | No | 4/6 days | NA | Positive |
| Zhao et al. (2020) | 1 F | 41 | Not reported | Prescribed herbal decoction | Yes | 9 days | NA | Positive |
| He et al. (2020) | 2 M | 25, 29 | Serious | Prescribed herbal decoction | Yes | 8/6 days | NA | Positive |
| Yang and Niu (2020) | 1 F | 74 | Serious | Prescribed herbal decoction | Yes | 15 days | NA | Positive |
| Wang et al. (2020e) | 2 M | 33, 54 | 1 (non-serious) / 1 (serious) | Prescribed herbal decoction | Yes | Not reported | NA | Positive |
| Li et al. (2020e) | 1 F | 71 | Serious | Prescribed herbal decoction | Yes | Not reported | NA | Positive |
| Feng et al. (2020) | 1 F | 51 | Serious | Prescribed herbal decoction | Yes | 15 days | NA | Positive |
| Xu et al. (2020) | 1 M | 35 | Non-serious | Prescribed herbal decoction | Yes | 12 days | NA | Positive |
| Liu et al. (2020b) | 1 F | 38 | Non-serious | Prescribed herbal decoction | Yes | 7 days | NA | Positive |
| Li et al. (2020f) | 2 F | 17, 45 | Non-serious | Chinese patent medicine + prescribed herbal decoction | No | 9 days | NA | Positive |
| Lin et al. (2020) | 1 F | 35 | Not reported | Prescribed herbal decoction | Yes | 12 days | NA | Positive |
| Hu et al. (2020) | 1 F | 61 | Serious | Chinese patent medicine + prescribed herbal decoction | Yes | 11 days | NA | Positive |
| Wang et al. (2020f) | 3/1 | 19, 32, 63, 63 | 2 (non-serious) / 2 (serious) | Chinese patent medicine | Yes | Not reported | NA | Positive |
| Deng et al. (2020) | 1 F | 39 | Serious | Prescribed herbal decoction | Yes | Not reported | NA | Positive |
| Ni et al. (2020) | 1/2 | 27, 51, 53 | Serious | Chinese patent medicine | 1 Yes / 2 No | Not reported | NA | Positive |
| Gao et al. (2020) | 1F | 42 | Non-serious | Chinese patent medicine | No | 7 days | NA | Positive |
| Li et al. (2020a) | 1/1 | 68, 47 | Non-serious | Prescribed herbal decoction | No | Not reported | NA | Positive |
| Lai et al. (2020) | 1/2 | 56, 61, 60 | 1 (non-serious) / 2 (not reported) | Prescribed herbal decoction | No | 6/7 days | NA | Positive |
| Wang et al. (2020a) | 1/1 | 45, 32 | Serious | Chinese herbal medicine injection + prescribed herbal decoction | Yes | 12/14days | NA | Positive |
| Wang et al. (2020b) | 1/1 | 63, 49 | Non-serious | Prescribed herbal decoction | Yes | 10/14 days | NA | Positive |
Note: M, male; F, female; T, treatment group involving Chinese herbal medicine; C, controlled group not involving Chinese herbal medicine; Yes, the intervention involved in this study was Chinese herbal medicine combined with conventional western therapy; No, the intervention involved in this trial was Chinese herbal medicines alone, not combined with conventional western therapy; NA, not applicable; Positive, Chinese herbal medicine has benefits on the treatment or adjuvant treatment of COVID-19; negative, Chinese herbal medicine has no benefits on the treatment or adjuvant treatment of COVID-19, or can even make the disease worse.
The severity (*) was classified according to the guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of COVID-19 released by the National Health Commission of the People’s Republic of China. We divide them into two categories of non-serious (including mild and common) and serious (including severe and critical).
Although the article (Wang et al., 2020c) did not specify the severity of COVID-19, since all participants in this trial were screened from suspected COVID-19 patients, we considered the severity of COVID-19 of these participants as non-serious.
Outcomes: ① cure rate; ② aggravation rate; ③ mortality rate; ④ the recovery rate of fever; ⑤ the recovery rate of cough; ⑥ the recovery rate of fatigue;⑦ the duration of fever; ⑧ the duration of cough; ⑨ the duration of fatigue; ⑩ negative conversion rate of nucleic acid test; ⑪ improvement or recovery of chest CT manifestations; ⑫ Length of hospitalization; ⑬ adverse events.
Although one trial (Yu et al., 2020) reported the outcome of aggravation rate, we did not enrolled the data on this outcome in the statistical analysis due to the inconsistency between the data presented in the table and in the text of the trial’s publication.