Systematic review of treatment effect of the traditional Chinese medicine compound based on astragalus and angelica on bone marrow suppression after chemotherapy

Objective To systematically review the effects of the traditional Chinese medicine compound based on astragalus and angelica on bone marrow suppression after chemotherapy. Methods Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) about the traditional Chinese medicine compound based on astragalus and angelica for bone marrow suppression after chemotherapy for malignant tumors were retrieved from Cochrane Library, PubMed, Web of Science, CINAHL, OVID, SinoMed, CNKI, VIP, and Wanfang Databases. The search period was from the establishment of the database to September 2019. The literatures were screened and the data were extracted independently by two researchers and RevMan 5.3 was used for Meta-analysis. Results Totally 15 RCTs were included, involving 1 019 patients. Meta-analysis results showed that there were statistically significant differences in peripheral blood leukocytes [SMD=1.32; 95% CI (0.76, 1.89) ; P<0.000 01], platelets [MD=25.05; 95% CI (8.00, 42.10) ; P=0.004], hemoglobin [MD=24.14; 95% CI (16.34, 31.94) ; P<0.000 01] and clinical symptoms [RR=1.38; 95% CI (1.25, 1.52) ; P<0.000 01] between the chemotherapy group, the chemotherapy combined with the western medicine group and the traditional Chinese medicine compound group. Conclusions The traditional Chinese medicine compound based on astragalus and angelica can improve the level of peripheral blood cells, reduce bone marrow suppression, and improve clinical symptoms and quality of life of patients with cancer after chemotherapy. However, due to the low quality of the included literature and the large heterogeneity of some of the results, more rigorously designed high-quality RCTs are needed for further verification.