Objective: To assess the effectiveness of oral Chinese herbal medicine (CHM) in relieving pain secondary to bone metastases in patients.
Methods: The searched electronic literature databases included both English and Chinese articles published in the MEDLINE, EMBASE, Wanfang database and China National Knowledge Infrastructure (up to December 2012). The studies included randomized controlled trials (RCTs) comparing CHM plus conventional treatment with conventional treatment alone for patients with pain secondary to bone metastases. The outcomes were the odds ratio (OR) with 95% confidence intervals (CI) for the pain-relief rate and adverse events.
Results: A total of 16 RCTs involving 1,008 patients were identified and analyzed. All of the included RCTs were associated with a moderate to high risk of bias. In the metaanalysis, CHM plus conventional treatment increased the pain-relief rate compared with the conventional treatment alone (OR, 2.59; 95% CI 1.95 to 3.45). In subgroup analysis, the pooled OR of the pain-relief rate of CHM plus conventional treatment compared with conventional treatment was 3.11 (95% CI 2.01 to 4.79) for CHM plus bisphosphonates, 2.24 (95% CI 1.33 to 3.78) for CHM plus analgesics, 2.28 (95% CI 1.09 to 4.79) for CHM plus radiotherapy, and 2.22 (95% CI 0.95 to 5.15) for CHM plus analgesics and bisphosphonates. The adverse events included nausea, vomiting, dizziness, fever, and constipation. No serious adverse events were reported in any of the included studies.
Conclusions: CHM interventions appear to have beneficial effects on pain secondary to bone metastases in patients. However, published efficacy trials are small in size to draw any firm conclusions.