Shenshuaining capsules as adjuvant treatment for chronic renal failure:systematic review and Meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials

Chronic renal failure(CRF) is one of the common diseases. Shenshuaining capsule (SSN) can be used to treat patients with CRF, and many randomized control trials(RCTs) have been conducted to investigate its efficacy. The current review aims to systematically evaluate the efficacy and safety of SSN as an adjuvant treatment for patients with CRF. Eleven English and Chinese electronic databases (up to October 2015), were searched to identify RCTs on SSN for CRF. Two reviewers independently extracted the data and assessed the quality of included studies by using Cochrane Handbook 5.1.Meta-analysis was carried out by using Revman 5.3 software. If the Meta-analysis was not suitable for some outcomes, only descriptive analysis would be conducted.429 related articles were identified and finally a total of 25 RCTs (1 937 patients including 1 059 patients of treatment group and 878 patients of control group) were included. The SSN treatment group was more effective than the control group in terms of clinical efficiency, blood urea nitrogen(BUN), serum creatinine(Scr) and creatinine clearance(Ccr). However, the efficacy of SSN on increasing hemoglobin (Hb) could not be determined. No serious adverse drug events or reactions were reported. SSN capsules have certain efficacy and safety in the adjuvant treatment for chronic renal failure. However, due to the generally low methodological quality of the included studies, this review can not provide high-quality evidence to prove the clinical efficacy of this drug. More well-designed and large-scale multi-center randomized controlled trials should be conducted in the future for verification.