SYSTEMATIC REVIEW article
Front. Neurol.
Sec. Experimental Therapeutics
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fneur.2025.1637608
Intervention of Astragalus membranaceus extract in rats of spinal cord injury: a systematic review and meta-analysis
Provisionally accepted
hong li wu
lan lan yuhao yangjia hao lijing dengzi chao zhouyu feng taofeng jiao chenle yi zhangchi zhang*- 成都中医药大学, 成都市, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
OBJECTIVE: Spinal cord injury (SCI) causes motor, sensory and autonomic dysfunction below the level of injury and its incidence is increasing every year. Astragalus Membranaceus Extract (AME) has received attention in spinal cord injury in recent years, but its specific effects in spinal cord injury are unclear.Databases of PubMed, Embase, WOS, Cochrane Library, FMRS, Clinical trial, CNKI, VIP, and WangFang were searched from their establishment to December 1, 2024 using the following terms: "Astragalus propinquus", "Huang qi", "Astragalus mongholicus Bunge", "Spinal cord injuries", "spinal cord diseases", "spinal cord trauma". To ensure comprehensiveness, the search strategy included both traditional names (Astragalus) and scientific names (Astragalus membranaceus). Only studies published in Chinese or English were included. Cross-sectional studies, survey designs, quality improvement studies, and other study designs that did not meet the inclusion criteria were excluded.After screening, a total of 16 studies with 996 animals were included in the review.Astragalus Membranaceus Extract (AME) administration was associated with more significant functional recovery (mean difference [MD] = 3.68, 95% CI = 2.74, 4.62). Subgroup analyses showed the best functional recovery of the spinal cord when the dose exceeded 20 units and the duration of treatment was less than 14 days.Our study suggests that AME has therapeutic potential for spinal cord injured rats.Further studies are needed to determine if this can be developed into a new alternative therapy through experimental and clinical studies with larger samples.
Keywords: Phytomedicine, spinal cord injury, animal experiments, Meta-analysis, Huang qi
Received: 29 May 2025; Accepted: 19 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 wu, yu, yang, li, deng, zhou, tao, chen, zhang and zhang. 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: chi zhang, 成都中医药大学, 成都市, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.