Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine

Review Article

A Systematic Review of Single Chinese Herbs for Alzheimer's Disease Treatment

Table 1

The study design, herbal intervention, outcome measures, and results of RCTs concerning single Chinese herbs in the treatment of AD.


Study	Design	Herb name	Quality	Rx N	Cx N	Outcome measures^a	Side effects	Results

Maurer et al. [14]	Randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel	G. biloba (EGb761) 80 mg tid for 3 months	3	10	10	SKT	No adverse events	Placebo (SKT) ()

Schneider et al. [15]	Randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel, multi-center	G. biloba (EGb761) 120 mg or 240 mg per day for 26 weeks	4	169 (120 mg) 170 (240 mg)	174	ADAS-cog, ADCS-CGIC	Related serious adverse events (1% in 120 mg Gp and 2% in 240 mg Gp)	Placebo

Mazza et al. [16]	Randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel	G. biloba (EGb761) 160 mg per day for 24 weeks	5	25	25^b, 26^c	SKT MMSE CGI	No adverse events	(1) Donepezil(2) Placebo (SKT, CGI) ()(3) Placebo (MMSE)

Xu et al. [17]	Randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel, multi-center	Huperzine A 0.2 mg b.i.d. for 8 weeks	3	50	53	Wechsler, Hasegawa, MMSE	No severe side effects	Placebo ()

Zhang et al. [18]	Randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel, multi-center	Huperzine A 0.4 mg per day for 12 weeks	4	100	102	ADAS MMSE	Ankle edema, insomnia (3%)	Placebo ()

Heo et al. [19]	Randomized, non-blinding, controlled, parallel	Ginseng 4.5 g or 9.0 g per day for 12 weeks	1	15 (9 g)15 (4.5 g),	31	ADAS, MMSE, CDR	Nausea, fever (13%)	(1) Rx (9 g) Cx (ADAS-cog, CDR) ()(2) (MMSE)

Rx, Herbal treatment; Cx: Control intervention. Rx Cx: The treatment is more effective than the control intervention. Rx Cx: No statistically significant difference between the treatment and control interventions.
^aPrimary outcome measure; ^bDonepezil 5 mg per day; ^cPlacebo.