The Effect of the Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine for the Treatment of Parkinson's Disease: A Meta-Analysis

OBJECTIVE: Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has been used to treat Parkinson's disease (PD), but the efficacy is still not clear. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of the integrated Chinese and Western medicine (ICWM) for PD through a meta-analysis. METHODS: We searched randomized controlled trials comparing integrated Chinese and Western medicine (ICWM) versus conventional Western medicine (CWM) for Parkinson's disease. Data were extracted from eligible studies. We sought to evaluate pretreatment and posttreatment symptoms of PD patients and their quality of life and reduce adverse reactions. The results were expressed as risk ratio (RR) and mean difference (MD) with accompanying 95% confidence intervals. RESULTS: Twenty-three studies were included in this study with a total of 1769 patients. The pooled results revealed that ICWM significantly improved the UPDRS score than CWM, the MD of UPDRS-I, II, III, and IV was -1.05 (95% CI: -1.42 to -0.69, P < 0.00001), -2.55 (95% CI: -3.19 to -1.90, P < 0.00001), -3.64 (95% CI: -4.69 to -2.60, P < 0.00001), and -0.61 (95% CI: -0.96 to -0.27, P = 0.0004), respectively, and ICWM also had a better score of PDQ-39 (MD = −8.71, 95% CI: -13.52 to -3.90, P = 0.0004) and MoCA scores (MD = 3.35, 95% CI: 1.65 to 5.04, P = 0.0001) compared with CWM. ICWM had certain advantages in terms of effective rate (RR = 1.27, 95% CI: 1.18 to 1.37, P < 0.00001) and adverse reactions (RR = 0.21, 95% CI: 0.13 to 0.36, P < 0.00001). CONCLUSION: Our research supported that ICWM had important health benefits for patients with PD and can effectively improve the symptoms of PD patients and their quality of life and reduce adverse reactions. Due to the lower quality of the included studies, large sample and multicenter randomized control test should be performed to verify our conclusions.