Efficacy of Xianglian pill for antibiotic-associated diarrhea: a protocol for systematic review and meta-analysis

Background:Antibiotic-associated diarrhea is a clinical common symptom of antibiotics overuse and occurs in 5%-70%of adults.Xianglian pill has been traditionally considered as an efficient treatment of diarrhea and gastrointestinal diseases for thousands of years.However,no systematic review and meta-analyses have focused on its positive effects.Hence,this protocol for systematic review and meta-analysis was developed to evaluate the effect and clinical safety of Xianglian pill on treating antibiotic-associated diarrhea.Methods:All randomized controlled trials published in Chinese and English and assessed use of Xianglian pill for antibiotic-associated diarrhea will be included.Databases of PubMed,EMBASE,Cochrane Library,China National Knowledge Infrastructure,Chinese Biomedical Literature,Wanfang,and Chinese Science and Technology Periodical Database will be searched for randomized controlled trials from their inception until November 16,2020.Primary outcomes will be the incidence of diarrhea and adverse events,and secondary outcomes will be bowel movements and microbiome characteristics.Two authors will extract data and assess the risk of bias independently.Risk ratio will be used to evaluate the results,and meta-analyses will be conducted using STATA 15.0 software.The review aims to demonstrate the effectiveness of Xianglian pill in the prevention and treatment of antibiotic-associated diarrhea.