A comparative study of Danhong injection and Salvia miltiorrhiza injection in the treatment of cerebral infarction

BACKGROUND To evaluate systematically the clinical effectiveness and safety of Danhong injection (DI) and Salvia miltiorrhiza injection (SMI) in the treatment of cerebral infarction. METHODS A literature search was conducted for retrieving randomized controlled trials (RCTs) on cerebral infarction treated by Danhong injection and SMI in the Cochrane Library, PubMed, Embase, China Biology Medicine disc, China National Knowledge Infrastructure Database, China Science and Technology Journal Database, Wanfang Database up to January 22, 2017. Two reviewers extracted information and independently assessed the quality of included RCTs by the Cochrane Risk of Bias Assessment Tool; then data were analyzed with Review Manager 5.3 software. RESULTS Twelve RCTs involving 1044 patients were included. The result of DI group was about 27% superior to SMI group in the clinical total effective rate (relative risk 1.27, 95% confidence interval 1.19-1.35, P < .00001). In addition, DI could prefect neurologic impairment (standardized mean difference -1.22, 95% confidence interval -1.90 to -0.54, P = .0004), and adjust hemorheological parameters. Three RCTs occurred 4 cases of adverse drug reactions/adverse drug events, but there were no serious adverse drug reactions/adverse drug events. CONCLUSION Comparing with SMI combined with western medicine, DI combined with conventional therapy is more effective in improving the clinical total effective rate and neurologic impairment, but more evidence-based medicine research needed to support our study further.