Meta-Analysis on the Efficacy and Safety of Traditional Chinese Medicine as Adjuvant Therapy for Refractory Androgenetic Alopecia

Objective. Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) therapies have been widely used for the treatment of androgenetic alopecia (AGA) for thousands of years. We conducted a meta-analysis to evaluate the curative efficacy and safety of TCM for treating AGA. Methods. Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of TCM for the treatment of AGA through March 2019 were systematically identified in 4 English databases, namely, PubMed, Cochrane Library, EMBASE, and Web of Science, and 4 Chinese databases, namely, Sino-Med, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), China Science and Technology Journal Database (VIP), and WanFang. Quality assessment and data analysis were performed by Review Manager 5.3.5, and Stata 15.1 was used to cope with publication bias. Results. 30 RCTs involving 2615 patients were randomly divided into a TCM group and a conventional medicine (CM) group. The results showed that the total efficacy rate (TER) of the TCM group was significantly higher than that of the control group (OR = 3.34, 95% CI = 2.75–4.05, ). The total symptom score (TSS) of the TCM group was markedly reduced when compared with the CM group (SMD = −0.86; 95% CI = −1.19, −0.53; ). The microelement levels (Fe2