Clinical Effect of Injinho-tang on Hyperbilirubinemia in Hepatobiliary Disorders: A Systematic Review

Purpose: This systematic review was conducted to evaluate the clinical effects of Injinho-tang on hyperbilirubinemia in hepatobiliary disorders.Methods: We searched for randomized controlled clinical trials that had administered Injinho-tang as an intervention in the following medical databases: Public/Publisher MEDLINE (PubMed), Excerpta Medica dataBASE (EMBASE), Cochrane library, Research Information Sharing Service (RISS), ScienceON, Oriental Medicine Advanced Searching Integrated System (OASIS), and China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI). Among the retrieved studies, only trials that met the inclusion criteria were selected, and serum total bilirubin values were extracted and analyzed from the finally selected trials.Results: The serum total bilirubin values of 1,302 patients with various hepatobiliary diseases were synthesized through a meta-analysis, which confirmed a decrease in serum total bilirubin of 21.03 µmol/L (95% CI -29.58~-12.49, p<0.01) in the group administered with Injinho-tang compared with the control group.Conclusions: Injinho-tang is effective in alleviating hyperbilirubinemia in hepatobiliary diseases when administered with conventional treatment. However, the potential risk of bias, high heterogeneity among the included trials, and differences in herbal composition are limitations of the results of this meta-analysis.