Efficacy of Qingfei Paidu Decoction on Patients with COVID-19 Pneumonia in Wuhan, China: A Propensity Score Matching Study

Abstract

Background. In view of the global efforts to develop effective treatments for the current worldwide coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, Qingfei Paidu decoction (QPD), a novel traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) prescription, was formulated as an optimized combination of constituents of classic prescriptions used to treat numerous febrile and respiratory-related diseases. This prescription has been used to treat patients with COVID-19 pneumonia in Wuhan, China. Hypothesis/Purpose. We hypothesized that QPD would have beneficial effects on patients with COVID-19. We aimed to prove this hypothesis by evaluating the efficacy of QPD in patients with COVID-19 pneumonia. Methods. In this single-center, retrospective, observational study, we identified eligible participants who received a laboratory diagnosis of COVID-19 between January 15 and March 15, 2020, in the west campus of Union Hospital in Wuhan, China. QPD was supplied as an oral liquid packaged in 200-mL containers, and patients were orally administered one package twice daily 40 minutes after a meal. The primary outcome was death, which was compared between patients who did and did not receive QPD (QPD and NoQPD groups, respectively). Propensity score matching (PSM) was used to identify cohorts. Results. In total, 239 and 522 participants were enrolled in the QPD and NoQPD groups, respectively. After PSM at a 1 : 1 ratio, 446 patients meeting the criteria were included in the analysis with 223 in each arm. In the QPD and NoQPD groups, 7 (3.2%) and 29 (13.0%) patients died, and those in the QPD group had a significantly lower risk of death (hazard ratio (HR) 0.29, 95% CI: 0.13–0.67) than those in the NoQPD group ( p = 0.004). Furthermore, the survival time was significantly longer in the QPD group than in the NoQPD group ( p < 0.001). Conclusion. The use of QPD may reduce the risk of death in patients with COVID-19 pneumonia.

Effect of Qingfei Paidu decoction combined with Western medicine treatments for COVID-19: A systematic review and meta-analysis

“…After eliminating duplicates, the titles, abstracts and full text of 279 records were screened. Finally, we included 9 studies with 1108 COVID-19 patients ( Chen et al, 2021 ; Li et al, 2020 ; Li and Zhang, 2020 ; Liu et al, 2021b ; Wang et al, 2021a ; Xin et al, 2020 ; Yu et al, 2020b ; Zeng et al, 2020 ; Zhang and Pan, 2021 ). WMT in each study were shown in Supplementary Table 1.…”

“…The screening process was shown in Figure 1 . Seven papers were published in Chinese and two in English ( Liu et al, 2021b ; Xin et al, 2020 ).

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“…Nine studies included were all conducted in China. Two were RCTs ( Li and Zhang, 2020 ; Wang et al, 2021a ) and the rest were non-RCTs ( Chen et al, 2021 ; Li et al, 2020 ; Liu et al, 2021b ; Xin et al, 2020 ; Yu et al, 2020b ; Zeng et al, 2020 ; Zhang and Pan, 2021 ). One study was conducted in several provinces of China ( Chen et al, 2021 ).…”

“…Among them, 37 non-severe patients were reported in Chen et al (2021) ; 55 non-severe patients in Li et al (2020) , 31 moderate patients in Yu et al (2020b) ; all patients were severe cases in two studies ( Li and Zhang, 2020 ; Zhang and Pan, 2021 ). Five studies reported patients had got complications ( Chen et al, 2021 ; Li et al, 2020 ; Liu et al, 2021b ; Xin et al, 2020 ; Yu et al, 2020b ). All research interventions were QFPDD combined with WMT, the course of treatment was no less than 3 days in all studies.…”

“…Four studies ( Li et al, 2020 ; Liu et al, 2021b ; Xin et al, 2020 ; Zhang and Pan, 2021 ) reported the AR involving 593 patients. The results demonstrated that the AR in QFPDD combined with WMT group was lower than that the WMT group by 71% [pooled RR=0.29, 95%CI (0.17, 0.51)] (Supplementary Figure 1).…”