Topical application of Chinese herbal medicine for atopic eczema: a systematic review with a meta-analysis.

Background: Atopic eczema (AE) affects 10-20% of children in industrialised countries.

Objective: This review systematically evaluated the effects and safety of topical use of Chinese herbal medicine (CHM) for AE.

Methods: Randomised controlled trials on topical use of CHM were identified through searching electronic databases. Their risk of bias was assessed. Meta-analysis was conducted by employing the RevMan 5.2 software.

Results: Ten studies involving 1,058 participants were included. These studies had high risk of bias in randomisation, blinding and outcome data. Meta-analysis showed that topical applications of CHM were superior to conventional medications in total effectiveness rate (risk ratio 1.19; 95% confidence interval 1.04 to 1.36). No significant difference was observed in overall skin lesion score (standardised mean difference -0.05; 95% confidence interval -0.88 to 0.78) compared to corticosteroid creams.

Conclusions: There was no conclusive evidence to demonstrate that topical application of CHM for AE was superior to other control interventions due to methodological weaknesses of the included randomised controlled trials.