SYSTEMATIC REVIEW article
Front. Med.
Sec. Nephrology
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmed.2025.1622999
This article is part of the Research TopicTraditional, Complementary and Integrative Medicine – Advances in Traditional Medicine and Knowledge for Sustainable Global DevelopmentView all articles
Efficacy and safety of Chinese Patent Medicine for treating patients with urinary tract infections: Systematic review and network meta-analysis
Provisionally accepted
- Department of urology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing, China
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Introduction: Chinese patent medicines (CPMs) have garnered increasing attention as a therapeutic option for urinary tract infections (UTIs); however, robust evidence supporting their efficacy remains limited. To address this gap, we performed a network meta-analysis (NMA) incorporating both direct and indirect comparisons to systematically evaluate and rank the efficacy and safety profiles of CPMs for UTIs.Methods: We systematically searched five electronic databases from inception through April 2025. Data were analyzed using a frequentist approach with random-effects models.Results: Twenty-three studies with 9 kinds of medicines and 3250 patients were included in this study. While network meta-analysis suggested Xueniaoan capsule with antibiotics (XNA_Ab) had the highest probability of being optimal, this conclusion requires cautious interpretation due to the low certainty of evidence from included studies.Conclusion: Several CPMs demonstrate potential therapeutic benefits for UTIs; however, these preliminary findings require validation through rigorously designed, large-scale randomized controlled trials.
Keywords: Network meta-analysis, randomized controlled trials, Urinary Tract Infections, Chinese medicine, systematic review
Received: 05 May 2025; Accepted: 05 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhao, Tang, Xu and Chen. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Gang Chen, Department of urology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing, China
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