A Systematic Review of Herbal Medicine for Chemotherapy Induced Peripheral Neuropathy

Chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy (CIPN) is a common adverse effect in cancer patients. The aim of this review was to assess the effectiveness of herbal medicine in preventing and treating CIPN.

Randomised controlled trials were included in this review. Extracting and assessing the data independently, two authors searched 13 databases.

Twenty-eight trials involving 2174 patients met the inclusion criteria. Although there were some exceptions, the methodological quality was typically low. Seventeen trials reported the incidence rate of CIPN assessed by various tools and 14 showed a significant difference regarding the decrease of the incidence rate between the two groups. For clinical improvement, 12 trials reported it using various tools and 10 showed a significant difference between two groups. Two cases of adverse events occurred in one trial; the other nine trials reported no adverse events.

We found that herbal medicines in combination with and/or without other therapies potentially have preventive or therapeutic effects on CIPN. However, conclusions cannot be drawn because of the generally low quality of the methodology, the clinical heterogeneity, and the small sample size for each single herbal medicine. Trials that are more rigorous and report sufficient methodological data are needed.