How fragile the positive results of Chinese herbal medicine randomized controlled trials on irritable bowel syndrome are?

ABSTRACT:

Objective

The fragility index (FI), which is the minimum number of changes in status from "event" to "non-event" resulting in a loss of statistical significance, serves as a significant supplementary indicator for clinical physicians in interpreting clinical trial results and aids in understanding the outcomes of randomized controlled trials (RCTs). In this systematic literature survey, we evaluated the FI for RCTs evaluating Chinese herbal medicine (CHM) for irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), and explored potential associations between study characteristics and the robustness of RCTs.

Methods

A comprehensive search was conducted in four databases in Chinese and four databases in English from their inception to January 1, 2023. RCTs encompassed 1:1 ratio into two parallel arms

SUBMITTER: Luo M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11323352 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature