Oral traditional Chinese medicine containing danshen and rhubarb combined with conventional Western treatment improved the effective rate of cardiac function improvement and 6-minute walk distance over Western treatment alone in chronic heart failure, and the authors conclude it can regulate intestinal flora.
Key Findings
Methods
The meta-analysis pooled 18 randomized controlled trials of danshen- and rhubarb-containing oral TCM plus conventional Western medicine for chronic heart failure.
Total of 1,455 patients with chronic heart failure: 731 in the trial group and 724 in the control group.
Databases searched included PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, Web of Science, CBM, CNKI, Wanfang, and Wipu, covering publications up to July 2024.
Study quality was assessed with reference to Newcastle-Ottawa Scale criteria, and data were analyzed with Review Manager 5.4.
The meta-analysis was registered as INPLASY202610010.
Results
Oral TCM plus conventional treatment produced a better effective rate of cardiac function improvement than conventional Western medicine alone.
This was reported as a pooled result across the included randomized trials.
The abstract does not give the effect size, confidence interval, or p-value for this outcome.
Results
The combination therapy produced better improvement in 6-minute walk test distance than conventional treatment alone.
The abstract reports a better improvement in 6-minute walk distance in the TCM combination group.
No numeric effect size or confidence interval is given in the abstract.
Conclusions
The authors conclude that oral danshen- and rhubarb-containing TCM combined with conventional methods can regulate the intestinal flora of patients with chronic heart failure.
This conclusion is stated in the abstract as the paper's overall finding.
The abstract does not describe any intestinal flora outcome data to support it; the reported outcomes are cardiac function effective rate and 6-minute walk distance.
Background
The paper frames TCM combined with routine therapy as able to improve clinical efficacy, reduce side effects, and improve cardiac function in chronic heart failure.
This is stated as background in the abstract.
The stated aim was to evaluate the clinical efficacy of danshen- and rhubarb-containing oral Chinese medicine combined with conventional Western drugs.
What This Means
This study combined the results of 18 randomized trials, involving 1,455 people with chronic heart failure, that tested herbal medicines containing danshen and rhubarb taken by mouth alongside standard Western heart failure drugs. It compared them with standard drugs alone.
The pooled results suggest that adding these herbal preparations was associated with a higher rate of improvement in heart function and a greater improvement in how far people could walk in six minutes. The authors also concluded that these herbal combinations may help regulate gut bacteria in people with heart failure.
There are limits to what the abstract shows. It does not report the size of the benefits or the statistical certainty, and it does not describe the gut bacteria data behind the conclusion about intestinal flora. The outcomes reported are heart function and walking distance. This research suggests a possible benefit, but the details would need to be examined in the full paper and in higher-quality trials.
Li Y, Wang X, Sun X. (2026). Efficacy of Oral Chinese Medicine in Regulating the Intestinal Flora of Patients with Chronic Heart Failure: A Meta-Analysis.. Nigerian journal of clinical practice. https://doi.org/10.4103/njcp.njcp_736_25