SYSTEMATIC REVIEW article
Front. Pharmacol.
Sec. Ethnopharmacology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fphar.2025.1573069
This article is part of the Research TopicTraditional, Complementary and Integrative Medicine – Opportunities for Managing and Treating Neurodegenerative Diseases and Ischaemic StrokeView all 15 articles
Efficacy and safety of Tongxinluo in the treatment of stroke:a systematic review and metaanalysis of randomized controlled trials
Provisionally accepted
- 1Heilongjiang University of Chinese Medicine, Harbin, China
- 2The First Affiliated Hospital of Heilongjiang University of Chinese Medicine, Harbin, China
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Objective: To evaluates the efficacy and safety of Tongxinluo in treating stroke. Methods: PubMed, Web of Science, Cochrane Library, Embase, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), and Wanfang databases were performed to search literature from 2000 to 2024. Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) evaluating Tongxinluo for stroke were included. The primary outcomes were efficacy and safety. Sensitivity and subgroup analyses were conducted to assess result stability and identify sources of heterogeneity. All analyses were conducted using Review Manager 5.4 and STATA 15.1. Results: Fifty-one RCTs including 9,577 participants for analysis. Tongxinluo significantly outperformed the control group in efficacy (RR = 1.20, 95% CI [1.16, 1.25]). Adverse event incidence between groups showed no significant difference (RR = 1.01, 95% CI [0.90, 1.12]). Additionally, Tongxinluo significantly improved NIHSS, total cholesterol (TC), and serum hypersensitive C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) levels in stroke individuals. Conclusion: Tongxinluo, as an adjunctive treatment for stroke, offers superior clinical efficacy compared to conventional treatments without increasing adverse event risk. However, due to study limitations, further multicenter, large-sample RCTs are required to confirm.
Keywords: Tongxinluo, adjunctive treatment, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Stroke, Meta-analysis
Received: 08 Feb 2025; Accepted: 03 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Wu, Fu, Zhou and Zhou. 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: Yabin Zhou, The First Affiliated Hospital of Heilongjiang University of Chinese Medicine, Harbin, China
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