Introduction: Simple obesity is a type of obesity that does not involve other diseases or medical factors. Obesity is a serious public health problem in children and has become more serious because of the social distancing caused by the coronavirus disease 2019. This study aims to evaluate the effectiveness and safety of herbal medicine for the treatment of simple childhood obesity. Methods and analysis: We will search 11 international databases, namely Medline, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, the Allied and Complementary Medicine Database, the Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature, Embase, the Oriental Medicine Advanced Searching Integrated System, the Research Information Service System, DataBase Periodical Information Academic, Wanfang, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, and the Chongqing VIP Chinese Science and Technology Journals Database. We will include randomised controlled trials on the application of herbal medicine on children with simple obesity. We will assess the quality of included studies using the Cochrane Handbook criteria version 5.2.0. We will synthesise and analyse the collected data using RevMan 5.3 software. Ethics and dissemination: Ethical approval is not required because there are no privacy concerns. The findings of this systematic review will be disseminated in a peer-reviewed journal. OSF registration number: DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/KCNPX.
Introduction. Herbal medicines (HM) and growth hormones (GH) are widely used to treat short stature (SS) in children. This systematic review aimed to evaluate the effectiveness and safety of combination therapy with HM and GH (CHG) compared to those of GH monotherapy (GHM) in children with SS. Methods. We searched 17 electronic databases from inception to 1 April 2021. Only randomized controlled trials (RCTs) were included. Two authors independently performed the selection and quality assessment of the included studies using Cochrane Handbook criteria. Relative risk (RR) was used to measure dichotomous outcomes with a 95% confidence interval (CI). Mean difference (MD) or standard MD (SMD) was used to measure continuous outcomes with a 95% CI. Results. Seven RCTs involving 455 participants with SS were included. Standard deviations in height (MD = 0.31, 95% CI: 0.24–0.38, p < 0.00001 ), and insulin-like growth factor binding protein-3 (MD = 1.39, 95% CI: 0.93–1.85, p < 0.00001 ) were significantly higher in the CHG group than in the GHM group. Growth velocity (MD = 1.82, 95% CI: 1.34–2.31, p < 0.00001 ) and insulin-like growth factor-1 (MD = 61.85, 95% CI: 55.80–67.90, p < 0.00001 ) were significantly higher in the CHG group. Adverse events were significantly lower in the CHG group (risk ratio: 0.10, 95% CI: 0.02–0.54, p = 0.007 ). However, the level of evidence was low. Conclusions. CHG demonstrated significantly better efficacy than GHM for treating SS, with a low incidence of adverse events. However, since the level of evidence is low, methodologically standardized RCTs are required to verify these results.
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