The Influence of Adding Traditional Chinese Medicine on COVID-19 Patients’ Liver Function: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

Abstract

Background: Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) is highly infectious and spreads rapidly across the world. Some patients occurred liver damage for unexplained reasons. Our study aims to explore whether Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) causes severe abnormal liver function compared to that of Western Medicine during the treatment process of COVID-19.Methods: We selected eligible studies with strict inclusion and exclusion criteria after systematically searching 7 databases up to May 30, 2020. Then, the study quality was assessed by the Cochrane risk of bias tool. Finally, we conducted a meta and subgroup analysis in the random-effects model to calculate risk ratio (RR) and 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) to evaluate the risk changes after adding TCM and the influence factor to RR. Results: A total of 2648 articles were searched, and 3 randomized controlled studies were included. Our results indicated that the occurrence of abnormal liver function had no statistical difference in the group added with TCM from Western Medicine groups. (RR=0.55[0.16,1,85], I2=58%, P=0.09>0.05). We also found that the high heterogeneity existed in two subgroups of common cases and all typecases, and it was statistically significant (I2=76.3%, P=0.04 <0.05）, which means the clinical type of COVID-19 may be the source of heterogeneity.Conclusion: Our research showed that adding TCM wouldn’ t damage the COVID-19 patients’ liver function. On the contrary, it may reduce the risk.