The effectiveness of herbal acupoint application for functional diarrhea: Protocol for a meta-analysis and data mining

BACKGROUND: Functional diarrhea (FDr), one of the most common functional gastrointestinal diseases, is a kind of functional bowel disease characterized by repeated paste feces or watery feces. However, no relevant systematic review or meta-analysis has been designed to evaluate the effects of herbal acupoint application (HAA) on FDr. There is also a lack of systematic evaluation and analysis of acupoints and herbs. METHODS: We will search the following 8 databases from their inception to October 15, 2021, without language restrictions: the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, PubMed, Embase, the Web of Science, the Chinese Biomedical Literature Database, the Chinese Scientific Journal Database, the Wan-Fang Database, and the China National Knowledge Infrastructure. The primary outcome measures will be clinical effective rate, functional outcomes, and quality of life. Data that meets the inclusion criteria will be extracted and analyzed using RevMan V.5.3 software (Available at: https://community.cochrane.org/help/tools-and-software/revman-5). Two reviewers will evaluate the studies using the Cochrane Collaboration risk of bias tool. We will use the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation approach to assess the overall quality of evidence supporting the primary outcomes. We will also use SPASS software (Version 19.0 (Available at: https://www.ibm.com/analytics/spss-statistics-software)) for complex network analysis to explore the potential core prescription of acupoint herbal patching for FDr. RESULTS: This study will analyze the clinical effective rate, bristol stool scale, number of daily bowel movements, clinical symptom scale of diarrhea, and effective prescriptions of HAA for patients with FDr. CONCLUSION: The conclusion of our findings will provide evidence for the effectiveness and potential treatment prescriptions of HAA for patients with FDr.