This systematic review aims to evaluate the efficacy and safety of Huoxiang Zhengqi formulas in treating gastrointestinal type cold. Seven electronic databases,including CNKI, WanFang Data, Vip, SinoMed, PubMed, Cochrane Library, Embase will be searched from the inception of the study until March 2017.All randomized controlled trials that evaluate the treatment of Huoxiang Zhengqi formulas for gastrointestinal type cold will be eligible. The methodological quality will be assessed using the Cochrane risk of bias tool for randomized clinical trials and Review Manager 5.3 software is used for analyzing the data.The results are： eight RCTs and 680 patients are included .Meta-analysis are performed according to the stratification of the treatment strategy. Eight studies report clinical efficacy, among them four studies show Huoxiang Zhengqi formulas are better than western medicine(RR and 95%,1.2[1.08, 1.33]), another four studies showHuoxiang Zhengqi formulas in conjunction with conventional treatment are better than conventional treatment(RR and 95%, 1.32[1.20,1.46]).About symptom remission rate, one study shows the treatment group effect is better than the control group from the following clinical symptoms：chills,fever,bowel diarrhea,the effect of treating sore throat itchy is same with western medicine treatment.No adverse reactions are found about Huoxiang Zhengqi formulas in this study.Current evidence shows that Huoxiangzhengqi formulas are better than Western medicine group and western medicine routine treatment group from clinical efficacy. Limited by the quantity and quality of studies, more large-scale and rigorously designed randomised controlled trials with large sample size are warranted to clarify the conclusions.
Keywords: Huoxiang Zhengqi; gastrointestinal type cold; meta analysis; systematic review.
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