Efficacy and safety of traditional Chinese herbal medicine combined with HAART in the treatment of HIV/AIDS: A protocol for systematic review and meta-analysis

BACKGROUND: Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) is one of the infectious diseases pandemic in the word. Traditional Chinese herbal medicine, as an alternative and complementary therapy of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART), has been put into the treatment of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)/AIDS over 30 years due to its good therapeutic effects and high safety, while there is a lack of evidence-based medicine support. The purpose of this study is to explore the efficacy and safety of traditional Chinese herbal medicine combined with HAART for HIV/AIDS patients. METHODS: We will search all randomized controlled trials of Chinese herbal medicine combined with HAART in the treatment of HIV/AIDS from electronic databases including PubMed, Cochrane Library, Embase, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, WanFang, China Science and Technology Journal Database and Chinese Biomedical Literature Database from inception to December 31, 2021. Literature screening will be conducted through EndNote software, and data extraction will be processed according to inclusion and exclusion criteria by two independent researchers. We will use Review Manager 5.4 and Stata 16 software for data analysis and publication bias test. RESULTS: This systematic review and meta-analysis will provide a high-quality evidence for the efficacy and safety of traditional Chinese herbal medicine combined with HAART in the treatment of HIV/AIDS. CONCLUSION: The conclusion of this review will provide an objective assessment to evaluate whether Chinese herbal medicine integrated with HAART has the effect of improving the efficiency and depressing the toxicity. REGISTRATION NUMBER: INPLASY2021110082.