The efficacy and safety of Chinese herbal compound combined with western medicine for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis: A protocol for systematic review and meta-analysis

BACKGROUND: Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) compound formulations are selected according to different populations, with strong targeting and less adverse reactions. As a complex disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) has limited efficacy in the use of conventional treatment regiments, short life cycle, high cost, many side effects, and low quality of life. It is urgent to seek new alternative therapies. Clinical practice shows that Chinese herbal compound combined with western medicine has certain therapeutic advantages, but there is no evidence of evidence-based medicine. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the efficacy and safety of Chinese herbal compound combined with western medicine in the treatment of ALS. METHODS: Use computer to retrieve English database (PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, the Cochrane Library) and Chinese database (CNKI, Wanfang Database, Weipu database, and China Biomedical Literature Service System), moreover manually retrieve Baidu academic and Google academic from the establishment of the database to 2020 July for randomized controlled clinical study on ALS treated with compound Chinese medicine with western medicine therapy, 2 researchers independently conducted data extraction and literature quality evaluation on the quality of the included studies, and meta-analysis of the included literature was carried out using RevMan5.3 software. RESULTS: This study evaluated the efficacy and safety of TCM combined with western medicine in the treatment of ALS by means of effective rate, improved Norris scale, ALS Functional Rating Scale, TCM syndrome score, and adverse reaction incidence. CONCLUSION: This study will provide reliable evidence for the clinical application of Chinese herbal compound combined with western medicine in the treatment of ALS. OSF registration number: DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/R5XG4