Systematic Evaluation on Clinical Efficacy of External Application of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Treatment of Breast Hyperplasia

Objective: To evaluate the clinical efficacy of external application of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) in the treatment of breast hyperplasia. Methods: Randomized controlled clinical trial literatures on external application of TCM in the treatment of breast hyperplasia in PubMed, Excerpta Medica Database (EMBASE), Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), China National Knowledge Infrastructure Database (CNKI) and Chinese Biomedical Abstract Database (CBM) from January 2000 to August 2015 were retrieved, and screened by researchers to data extraction. RevMan 5.3 was applied for meta analysis. Results: A total of 15 clinical trials with 2 107 patients with breast hyperplasia were included, in which 1 151 were divided into treatment group treated with external application of TCM while 956 into control group. Meta analysis indicated that the clinical response rate and improvement of symptom scores (breast lump size) as well as serum levels of estradiol (E-2), progesterone (P) and prolactin (PRL) in treatment group were superior to the control group and the differences were statistically significant (P< 0.05). Although external application of TCM had a tendency of alleviating clinical symptoms (breast lump pain, hardness and range as well as complicated symptoms), there was no statistically significant difference between two groups (P> 0.05). Conclusion: External application of TCM, to some extent, can improve the clinical efficacy in the treatment of breast hyperplasia, and it is necessary to carry out higher-quality, multicenter, large-scale, prospective and double-blind clinical trials for further validation.