Danshen Decoction in the Treatment of Hyperlipidemia: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis Protocol of Randomized Controlled Trials

Background. Hyperlipidemia is a common clinical chronic disease that increases the incidence of cardiovascular disease. However, although oral drug therapy can reduce blood lipids, long-term drug treatment may cause various side effects. Therefore, it is important to find suitable alternatives for the treatment of hyperlipidemia. The classic traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) prescription Danshen decoction (DSD) has been found effective for the treatment of hyperlipidemia. This protocol aims to evaluate the efficacy and safety of DSD in the treatment of hyperlipidemia. Methods and Analysis. We will screen all the randomized controlled trials (RCTs) which research DSD in the treatment of hyperlipidemia from 7 databases from their inception to July 2022; three investigators will independently screen and select RCTs and extract data and assess the risk of bias. The Cochrane scale, Jadad scale, and GRADE scale will be used to assess the risk of bias, literature quality, and outcome quality, respectively. Review Manager V.5.4 will be used for the meta-analysis, and the results will be presented as the risk ratio (RR) for the binary data and the mean difference (MD) or standardized mean difference (SMD) for the continuous data. Ethical approval and Dissemination. This protocol for a systematic review will be submitted to a peer-reviewed journal for publication and ethical approval is not applicable. PROSPERO registration number.CRD42022352467.