Efficacy of epalrestat plus α-lipoic acid combination therapy monotherapy in patients with diabetic peripheral neuropathy: a meta-analysis of 20 randomized controlled trials.

Objective: To evaluate the efficacy of α-lipoic acid (ALA) plus epalrestat combination therapy in the treatment of diabetic peripheral neuropathy (DPN).

Data Sources: The electronic databases of PubMed, Medline, Embase, the Cochrane Library, the Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure, the Wanfang Database and the Chinese Biomedical Database were used to retrieve relevant studies without language restrictions. The search was conducted from the inception of each database to 7 October 2016.