Influence of combined therapy with conventional and herbal medicines on liver function in 138 inpatients with abnormal liver transaminase levels

BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine

Research Article

Kyuseok Kim¹  Hae Jeong Nam¹  Jun Hyuk Shin² 

[1] Department of Ophthalmology, Otorhinolaryngology & Dermatology of Korean medicine, College of Korean Medicine, Kyung Hee University, #1 Hoegi-dong, Dongdaemun-gu, 130-701, Seoul, Republic of Korea;Graduate school of Korean medicine, Kyung Hee University, #1 Hoegi-dong, Dongdaemun-gu, 130-701, Seoul, Republic of Korea;

关键词: Combined therapy of conventional and herbal medicines;    Liver function;    Liver transaminases;    AST;    ALT;    GGT;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12906-016-1482-5

 received in 2015-09-04, accepted in 2016-11-14,  发布年份 2016

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundTo evaluate the influence of combined therapy of conventional and herbal medicines on liver function.MethodsThis study was a retrospective chart review. A total of 138 patients with abnormal liver transaminase levels at the time of admission were included in this study. We evaluated the influence of combined therapy of conventional and herbal medicines on liver transaminase levels over a period of at least 2 weeks at Kyung Hee University Korean Medical Hospital. Analyses were performed using SPSS version 17.0 for Windows. Paired T-tests were used to examine the significance of differences in AST, ALT, and GGT levels at the time of admission and discharge.ResultsWe found that combined therapy reduced levels of aspartate aminotransferase (AST), alanine aminotransferase (ALT), and gamma glutamyl transferase (GGT) to a statistically significant level. Specifically, there were 48, 66, 104 subjects who exhibited abnormal AST, ALT and GGT levels at admission, which was reduced to 13, 37, and 64 subjects after combined therapy, respectively. Some subjects exhibited worsening levels of liver transaminases after combined therapy, so we used the χ2 test to analyze the influence of combined therapy with conventional and herbal medicines on liver function according to initial liver transaminase levels. According to this analysis, ALT and GGT levels may be more important than AST levels in estimating the influence of combined therapy on patients with abnormal liver transaminase levels.ConclusionsBased on this retrospective chart review, combined therapy of conventional and herbal medicines would be considered relatively safe. Thus, if patients have abnormal ALT or GGT levels, caution should be taken when suggesting combined therapy with conventional and herbal medicines.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© The Author(s). 2016