Background: Several quantitative systematic reviews of Kanglaite (KLT), an herb preparation used to treat cancer and malignant pleural effusion, have been published in recent years. However, the clinical evidence reported in these studies has not been pursued further and the methodological quality of these meta-analyses remains unknown. Therefore, an overview was designed to map the evidence landscape based on the published meta-analyses on KLT in cancer treatment.Methods: Two bibliographic databases (PubMed and Embase) were searched from inception to 25 November 2021. Two independent reviewers were involved in study selection, data abstraction, and methodological quality assessment using AMSTAR 2. The principal features of publications and the clinical outcomes of efficacy and safety were synthesized narratively, and results of methodological quality were reported as frequencies and percentages with the corresponding 95% confidence intervals. The evidence map was used to visualize the overall quality. Excel 2016 and Stata 17/SE were used for data analysis.Results: Thirteen meta-analyses published in English were included for in-depth analysis. Among them, the year of publication ranged from 2008 to 2021, and the number of included patients ranged from 488 to 2,964. Regarding the cancer type, seven articles focused on non-small cell lung cancer, two on malignant pleural effusion, and four reviews on digestive system malignancies, such as hepatocellular carcinoma and pancreatic cancer. Almost all included meta-analyses reported that KLT as adjunctive therapy could improve various efficacy outcomes (such as disease response rates, quality of life, immune indicators) and reduce the rate of occurrence of adverse reactions, such as nausea and vomiting, leukopenia, and anemia. In terms of their methodological quality, three meta-analyses were of low quality, whereas 10 studies were critically low in quality. The methodological flaws main involved items 2 (“predesigned protocol and registration informatio’’), 3 (“rationale of study design for inclusion”), 4 (“comprehensive search strategy’’), 5 (“literature selection in duplicate’’), 7 (“list of excluded studies with reasons’’), 8 (“adequate information on included studies’’), 10 (“funding support for included primary studies’’), and 12 (“evaluation of the potential impact of risk of bias’’) based on the AMSTAR 2 tool.Conclusion: Current evidence reveals that KLT is effective and safe as an adjunctive treatment for non-small cell lung cancer, malignant pleural effusion, and digestive system malignancies (such as hepatocellular carcinoma). However, the results assessed in this overview should be further verified using well-designed and clearly reported clinical trials and meta-analyses of KLT.

Berberine is a potential drug that can effectively treat cardiovascular diseases, including premature ventricular contractions (PVCs). This study was conducted to assess the efficacy and safety of berberine for PVCs. The literature was searched using PubMed, Cochrane Library, Embase, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), China Science and Technology Journal Database (VIP), Wanfang, and Chinese Biomedical Literature Database (CBM) for randomized controlled trials (RCTs) from inception to October 1, 2022. The risk of bias was assessed using the Revised Cochrane risk-of-bias tool for randomized trials, and the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development, and Evaluation (GRADE) system was adopted to assess the quality of evidence. Ten RCTs with 896 participants were included in the meta-analysis. The results showed that compared to antiarrhythmic drugs (AD), berberine (BE) combined with AD had a higher effective rate (RR = 1.26; 95% CI:1.12, 1.42; p = 0.0001) with no significant incidence of adverse reactions (RR = 0.93; 95% CI:0.33, 2.57; p = 0.88), and BE alone had no significant difference in effective rate (RR = 0.91; 95% CI:0.77, 1.07; p = 0.23), and a lower incidence of adverse reactions (RR = 0.38; 95% CI:0.15, 0.97; p = 0.04) and recurrence rate (RR = 0.40; 95% CI:0.18, 0.88; p = 0.02). The results suggest that BE is an effective and safe adjunctive method for PVCs. In addition, BE is recommended for patients with PVCs who had severe adverse reactions after administrating AD as an alternative therapy.

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is a major global health problem due to its great disease and economic burdens. Tea is a popular beverage consumed by billions of people. globally owing to its health benefits. However, the evidence regarding the association between tea intake and NAFLD risk is inconsistent. To examine the genetically predicted causal association between tea intake and NAFLD risk using the two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) method. Single‐nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) strongly associated with tea intake were obtained from a large dataset (N = 447,485) in the UK biobank, and summary‐level genetic data for NAFLD (2,275 cases and 375,002 controls) were collected from the FinnGen consortium. The two-sample MR method was used to investigate the causal association between tea intake and NAFLD risk. The random‐effects inverse‐variance weighted (IVW) was used as the primary approach for estimating the causal effect, and MR Egger, weighted median, simple mode, and weighted mode were used to verify the robustness of the primary results. Twenty-four valid SNPs were selected as the instrumental variables for tea intake. The IVW results indicated that tea intake was not causally associated with NAFLD risk (Odds ratio: 1.48; 95 % confidence interval: 0.64, 3.43; p = 0.364); moreover, the results from other methods were consistent with this finding. A leave-one-out analysis further demonstrated the robustness of our results. No evidence of heterogeneity, outliers, or horizontal pleiotropy was found. Our results do not support tea intake being causally associated with a decreased risk of NAFLD.

Acute uncomplicated lower urinary tract infection (UTI) is one of the most common bacterial infections. Patients usually present with dysuria, urinary urgency, urinary frequency, and suprapubic pain or tenderness. Approximately 150 million people are diagnosed with UTI each year worldwide. The high recurrence rate of lower UTI is a common problem of clinical treatment. The misuse of antibiotics has led to the emergence of a number of resistant bacterial strains. Thus, traditional Chinese medicine is considered as an alternative option for treating acute uncomplicated lower UTI. Thus, this study aims to evaluate the efficacy and safety of Sanjin tablets (SJT) for the treatment of acute uncomplicated lower UTI, explore whether SJT can reduce or substitute the use of antibiotics, and reduce the recurrence rate in the treatment of acute uncomplicated lower UTI. In this study, a randomized, double-blind, double-dummy, parallel control of positive drug, multicenter clinical study will be established. A total of 252 patients with acute uncomplicated lower UTI (syndrome of dampness-heat in the lower jiao) will be randomly allocated in the ratio of 1:1:1 to three groups: experimental group; control group 1; and control group 2. The experimental group receives Sanjin tablets plus levofloxacin tablets (LT) placebo; the control group 1 receives LT plus SJT placebo; and the control group 2 receives SJT plus LT on the first five days, SJT plus LT placebo on the last two days. Each group will be treated for seven days and followed-up 1–2 times. The primary outcome measures of effective rate and recurrence rate are symptoms. Secondary outcome measures of effective rate and recurrence rate are the urine leukocytes, bacteriology examination, and safety assessment. Outcomes will be assessed at baseline and after treatment. This study protocol will provide the research data of efficacy and safety of SJT for the treatment of acute uncomplicated lower UTI. The first aim is to determine whether Sanjin tablets can reduce the use of antibiotics; the second aim is to determine whether Sanjin tablets can substitute the use of antibiotics. The recurrence rate will be assessed after cured to determine whether SJT can reduce the recurrence rate. The results of this study will improve the rational use of drugs, especially the rational application of antibiotics. It will also enable safety evaluation from laboratory indices and adverse events, which will provide reliable evidence for clinical treatment. ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT03658291 . Registered on 4 September 2018.

Background: Some anti-diabetic drugs have been proved to be a tumor suppressor or activator. The associations of three relatively new classes of anti-diabetic medications–glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1RA), dipeptidyl peptidase 4 inhibitors (DPP-4I), and sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 inhibitors (SGLT-2I) with lung cancer prognosis remain unclear.Methods: The electronic medical data from the National Healthcare Big Data (East) Center was retrospectively analyzed. We included 11,357 newly diagnosed lung cancer patient with type 2 diabetes (T2D) between January 1st, 2020 and July 1^st, 2023. Patients were categorized into eight groups according to the mono-or-combination therapy of GLP-1RA, DPP-4I and SGLT-2I. Disease progression and mortality risk were evaluated by cox proportional hazards analysis. Progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) were assessed by the Kaplan-Meier (log-rank) method.Results: Lung cancer patients with T2D who were treated with SGLT-2I & GLP-1RA exhibited the lowest progression (hazard ratio [HR]: 0.37; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.18, 0.78) and mortality risks (HR: 0.34; 95% CI: 0.14, 0.82) as well as prolonged median PFS (1.55 years) and OS (1.62 years) among all groups. In contrast, DPP-4I monotherapy did not show benefit for progression (HR: 1.09; 95% CI: 0.98, 1.22. Median PFS: 1.41 years) and mortality risks (HR: 0.96, 95%CI: 0.84, 1.09. Median OS: 1.48 years). However, when DPP-4I was used in combination with SGLT-2I or GLP-1RA, it caused reductions in both progression and mortality risks.Conclusion: SGLT-2I & GLP-1RA dual therapy is associated with improved prognosis for lung cancer patients with concurrent T2D. DPP-4I transits from a tumor activator to suppressor when combined with other anti-diabetic drugs. Future studies are needed to examine the underlying biological mechanisms.

This study integrated ancient Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) pulse diagnosis techniques with modern machine learning to advance contemporary medical diagnostics. A portable intelligent TCM pulse diagnostic device was developed using MEMS and CMOS technologies to collect detailed pulse waveform data from three groups: healthy females, females with coronary heart disease (CHD), and pregnant females in the first trimester. Three feature selection methods—Random Forest, Recursive Feature Elimination, and correlation analysis were adopted to identify key pulse features. Thirteen classification algorithms using various combinations of feature selection and machine learning approaches were evaluated. This study achieved a maximum classification accuracy of 80% using solely pulse data. Incorporating clinical parameters such as temperature and age significantly increased classification accuracy to 91%. The Gradient Boosting Decision Tree model with correlation analysis-based feature selection and Random Forest-based dimensionality reduction demonstrated the highest accuracy. Key pulse features identified included those related to the Liver Meridian, Pericardium Meridian, and Heart Meridian, which are crucial for differentiating the three groups. This study validated the clinical utility of pulse diagnostic devices when combined with machine learning algorithms. This study demonstrates concrete clinical utility for the pulse diagnostic device, while empirically validating foundational TCM concepts. It establishes a rigorous framework to advance evidence-driven modernization of pulse diagnosis protocols.