Abstract
Objective: Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a common functional gastrointestinal disorder, and a symptom-based diagnosis. Because of the unclear mechanisms, the treatment available have not acquired the satisfied effect. We performed a meta-analysis to assess the effectiveness and safety of herbal enema in treating IBS compared to the calcium channel blocker administration. Methods: We searched for randomized controlled trials (RCTs) testing herbal enema in patients with IBS which compared to the calcium channel blocker administration in PubMed, EMMBASE, the Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), the Wan-fang Database and the VIP Database up to May 2016 with no language restrictions. Primary outcome was the global symptom improvement and secondary outcome was the symptom severity scale score. Safety was also assessed. We used Revman 5.3 to estimate the pooled mean difference (MD) for continuous outcomes and relative risk (RR) for binary outcome measures, with a 95% confidence interval (CI). Results: Five studies (230 patients in experimental group and 209 patients in control group) were included in the meta-analysis. The results showed that herbal enema as the sole intervention or combined with other treating methods could significantly promote the global symptom improvement and mucous stool scale and has potential to improve abdominal distention compared to the calcium channel blocker administration. But there was no difference between the two groups in abdominal pain. The recurrence rate was lower than the control group. Conclusions: The study indicated that herbal enema may be an effective assistant means for IBS.
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