Efficacy and safety of Chinese Herbal Medicine for Vascular dementia: A protocol of systematic review and meta-analysis

Review question / Objective: As a common type of clinical dementia, the prevalence rate of vascular dementia(VaD) increased rapidly in recent years, damaging both patients’ health and social-economic prospect. There is currently no effective treatment for VaD, though western medicines can slightly improve patients' cognitive function, but not brought a significant improvement in daily life ability. Chinese herbal medicine(CHM) has been widely employed to treat dementia for more than 2000 years in China. Despite the proliferation of relevant literature, there is still a lack of evidence to prove the effectiveness and safety of such therapy. Therefore, this systematic review and meta-analysis protocol is aimed to assess the efficacy and safety of CHM forVaD. Information sources: 6 English databases (PubMed, Web of Science, Embase, Springer, CENTRAL and WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform) and 4 Chinese databases (Wan fang Database, Chinese Scientific Journals Database, China National Knowledge Infrastructure Database and Chinese Biomedical Literature Database).