ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND@#Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has become a worldwide life-threatening pandemic. Lianhua Qingwen is believed to possess the ability to treat or significantly improve the symptoms of COVID-19. These claims make it important to systematically evaluate the effects of using Lianhua Qingwen with Western medicine to treat COVID-19.@*OBJECTIVE@#To evaluate the safety and efficacy of combination therapy, employing Lianhua Qingwen with Western medicine, to treat COVID-19, using a meta-analysis approach.@*SEARCH STRATEGY@#China National Knowledge Infrastructure, Wanfang Database, VIP Database, PubMed, Embase, and Cochrane Library databases were searched for studies evaluating the effect of Lianhua Qingwen-Western medicine combination therapy in the treatment of COVID-19.@*INCLUSION CRITERIA@#(1) Research object: hospitalized patients meeting the diagnostic criteria of COVID-19 were included. (2) Intervention measures: patients in the treatment group received Lianhua Qingwen treatment combined with Western medicine, while the control group received either Western medicine or Chinese medicine treatment. (3) Research type: randomized controlled trials and retrospective study were included.@*DATA EXTRACTION AND ANALYSIS@#Two researchers extracted the first author, the proportion of males and females, age, body temperature, course of treatment, rate of disappearance of main symptoms, duration of fever, adverse reactions, and total effectiveness from the literature. Odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence interval (CI) were used as the effect value for count data, and mean difference (MD) and 95% CI were used as the effect value for measurement data.@*RESULTS@#Six articles met the inclusion criteria, including a total of 856 COVID-19 patients. The meta-analysis showed that Lianhua Qingwen combination therapy achieved higher rates of fever reduction (OR = 3.43, 95% CI [1.78, 6.59], P = 0.0002), cough reduction (OR = 3.39, 95% CI [1.85, 6.23], P < 0.0001), recovery from shortness of breath (OR = 10.62, 95% CI [3.71, 30.40], P < 0.0001) and recovery from fatigue (OR = 2.82, 95% CI [1.44, 5.53], P = 0.003), higher total effectiveness rate (OR = 2.51, 95% CI [1.73, 3.64], P < 0.00001), and shorter time to recovery from fever (MD = -1.00, 95% CI [-1.04, 0.96], P < 0.00001), and did not increase the adverse reaction rate (OR = 0.65, 95% CI [0.42, 1.01], P = 0.06), compared to the single medication control.@*CONCLUSION@#The Lianhua Qingwen and Western medicine combination therapy is highly effective for COVID-19 patients and has good clinical safety. As only a small number of studies and patients were included in this review, more high-quality, multicenter, large-sample-size, randomized, double-blind, controlled trials are still needed for verification.
Subject(s)
Female , Humans , Male , COVID-19 , Drugs, Chinese Herbal , Multicenter Studies as Topic , Pandemics , Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic , Retrospective Studies , SARS-CoV-2ABSTRACT
To explore the expression of Beclin1 in osteosarcoma and investigate the effects of down-regulation of autophagy on the chemotherapeutic sensitivity to cisplatin (DDP),the expression of Beclin1 in 28 specimens of osteosarcoma (group A) and 19 specimens of normal bone tissues (group B) were immunohistochemically detected. The expression of Beclin1 mRNA in MG63 cells treated with different concentrations of DDP was examined with RT-PCR. After down-regulation of autophagy in MG63 cells by an autophagy inhibitor,3-methyladenine (3-MA),the cell proliferation inhibition rate of MG63 cells treated with DDP was evaluated by using the MTT assay. The positive rates of Beclinl were 67.85% in group A and 94.73% in group B. Its expression was lower in osteosarcoma than in normal bone tissues,with a significant difference found between them (P＜0.05).RT-PCR showed that the expression of Bcclin1 mRNA in the cells treated with high-dose DDP were higher than that in the non-treated cells,and no significant difference in the expression of Beclin1 mRNA was found between the cells treated with low-dose DDP and the non-treated cells. There was a positive correlation between the level of Beclin1 mRNA expression and the concentration of DDP.MTT assay showed that the proliferation inhibition rates of the cell treated with 3-MA and DDP combined were substantially increased when compared with those treated with DDP alone (P＜0.01).This study demonstrated that autophagy may be implicated in the carcinogenesis of osteosarcoma,and DDP may induce autophagy in the MG63 cells. It also suggests that the down-regulated autophagy could increase chemotherapeutic sensitivity of DDP to osteosarcoma.