Effectiveness and safety of Liuhe Pill for treating gout: A protocol for a systematic review and meta-analysis

BACKGROUND: Liuhe Pill as a famous traditional Chinese medicine formula is usually used to treat gout, acute pancreatitis, and cellulitis in China. But at present, there is no systematic evaluation report on its therapeutic effectiveness and safety of Liuhe Pill for treating gout. This protocol aims to assess the efficacy and safety of Liuhe Pill for treating gout. METHODS: We will search the Web of Knowledge, EMBASEWANFANG DATA, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), PubMed, ClinicalTrials.gov and Cochrane Library from inception to October 31, 2021 to retrieve relevant studies. We will also search citations of relevant primary and review. Authors of abstract in the meeting will be further searched in PubMed for potential full articles. To minimize the risk of publication bias, we will conduct a comprehensive search that included strategies to find published and unpublished studies. Two authors independently judged study eligibility and extracted data. Heterogeneity will be examined by computing the Q statistic and I(2) statistic. RESULTS: This study assessed the efficiency and safety of Liuhe Pill for treating gout. CONCLUSIONS: This study will provide reliable evidence-based evidence for the clinical application of Liuhe Pill for treating gout.