Efficacy and safety of Lianhua Qingwen combined with conventional antiviral Western Medicine in the treatment of coronavirus disease (covid-19) in 2019：Protocol for a systematic review and meta-analysis

Background: The novel coronavirus pneumonia (COVID-19) has spread to >200 countries and regions. There is no effective antiviral drug for COVID-19. Traditional Chinese medicine, such as Lianhua Qingwen, has achieved some curative effect in many countries, but its effect is not clear.We aim to assess the efficacy and safety of Lianhua Qingwen combined with Conventional antiviral Western Medicine in Clinical treatment of COVID-19 or asymptomatic infection. Methods: The following electronic bibliographic databases will be searched to identify relevant studies: CNKI, CBM, VIP and Wanfang databases, PubMed, EMBASE, MEDLINE, Cochrane central, and clinical trial registration centers, such as China Clinical Trial Registration Center (ChiCTR), Netherlands National Trial Registration Center (NTR) and clinical trials.gov. In addition, Manual retrieval of articles, conference papers, ongoing experiments, internal reports, among others, to supplement electronic retrieval. Select all eligible studies published before May 8, 2020. According to the Cochrane Handbook “bias risk” assessment tool, bias risk is independently assessed. The independent Newcastle Ottawa scale was used to conduct methodological quality assessment of nonrandomized trials. STATA15.1 and RevMan5.3 software were used to analyze meta outcomes of different intervention measures for the treatment of new crown pneumonia and the control group (conventional antiviral western medicine treatment) clinical efficacy. Results: This study will provide a relatively high-quality synthesis of current evidence of Lianhua Qingwen combined with Conventional antiviral Western Medicine in the treatment of COVID-19 from several aspects including the Clinical effective rate, CT improvement rate, severe conversion rate, antipyretic time, disappearance rate of fever symptoms, disappearance rate of cough symptoms, disappearance rate of asthenia symptoms, and adverse drug events. Conclusion: The conclusion of this review will provide evidence to judge whether Lianhua Qingwen combined with Conventional antiviral Western Medicine is an effective and safe intervention for COVID-19. Ethics and dissemination: This systemic review will evaluate the efficacy and safety of Lianhua Qingwen combined with Conventional antiviral Western Medicine in the treatment of COVID-19. Since all the data included are published, the systematic review does not need ethical approval. INPLASY registration number: INPLASY202060067 Abbreviations: BAs = comparison before and after the study, C0VID-19 = Corona Virus Disease 2019, ChiCTR = China Clinical Trial Registration Center, MERS =Middle East respiratory syndrome, NOS = Newcastle Ottawa scale, NTR = Netherlands National The study was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Number 86174092) and a grant from the School construction project of State Administration of traditional Chinese medicine (Grant Number LPGZS22014-11). The authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose. All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article [and its supplementary information files]. a Changchun University of Chinese Medicine, b Changchun Hospital of Chinese Medicine, c Department of lung diseases, the Third Clinical Hospital of Changchun University of Chinese Medicine, Changchun, Jilin, China. ∗ Correspondence: Mingjun Liu, and Xiaolin Zhang, professor, Changchun University of Chinese Medicine, 1035 Boshuo Road, Jingyue Economic Development Zone, Changchun City, Jilin Province 130117, China (e-mail: mingjunliu646590@163.com, XiaoFengZ0077@163.com). Copyright © 2020 the Author(s). Published by Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (CCBY), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. How to cite this article: Zhang X, Cao D, Liu J, Zhang Q, Liu M. Efficacy and safety of Lianhua Qingwen combined with conventional antiviral Western Medicine in the treatment of coronavirus disease (covid-19) in 2019: Protocol for a systematic review and meta-analysis. Medicine 2020;99:30(e21404). Received: 20 June 2020 / Accepted: 23 June 2020 http://dx.doi. org/10.1097/MD.0000000000021404 Study Protocol Systematic Review Medicine®