Chinese herbal medicine, which has been used for thousands of years in China, has long been considered an effective treatment for vascular dementia. There are already meta-analyses of the effects of herbal extracts (ginkgo biloba and huperzine A) on vascular dementia. However, there has been no systematic review of the efficacy and safety of Chinese herbal medicines for vascular dementia, despite its wide use in clinical practice.
A recent study published in the Neural Regeneration Research (Vol. 8, No. 18, 2013) evaluated the efficacy and safety of Chinese herbal medicines for vascular dementia, using efficacy, Mini-Mental State Examination score, Hasegawa Dementia Scale score, and adverse reactions as evaluation indices by performing a meta-analysis. The results suggested that Chinese herbal medicine appears to be safer and more effective than control measures in the treatment of vascular dementia. Chinese herbal medicines for vascular dementia exert characteristics of syndrome differentiation of traditional Chinese medicine, and have good potential in the clinic.
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