Chinese herbal medicine for psoriasis

Background: Psoriasis is a chronic recurrent dermatological disease that patents always suffer from different commorbidities. Chinese herbal medicine (CHM) has been commonly used in the treatment of psoriasis for a long history. Previous systematic reviews (SRs)/meta-analyses (MAs) have showed that CHM may benefit the patients with psoriasis. This overview aims to summarize the evidence from published SRs/MAs for clinical application and to provide some directions for future researches. Methods: Nine electronic databases (Pubmed, Embase, Cochrane Library, AMED, CINAHL, CBM, CNKI, VIP Database, Wanfang Databases) will be searched from their inceptions to September 2020 without language restrictions. At least two reviewers will independently conducted the study selection, data extraction, and quality assessment. The methodological quality, risk of bias, reporting quality and evidence quality will be respectively evaluated by the Assessing the Methodological Quality of Systematic Reviews 2 (AMSTAR 2), the Risk of Bias in Systematic reviews (ROBIS), the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA), and the Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) system. Results: The results of this overview will be submitted to a peer-reviewed journal for publication. Conclusions: We expect to compile current evidence from published SRs/MAs of CHM for patients with psoriasis in an accessible and useful document. Ethics and dissemination: This study is a protocol for overview of SRs/MAs that did not involve individual data. Thus, the ethical approval is not required. Abbreviations: CHM: Chinese herbal medicine, SRs: systematic reviews, MAs: meta-analyses, AMSTAR 2: Assessing the Methodological Quality of Systematic Reviews 2, ROBIS: Risk of Bias in Systematic reviews, PRISMA: Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses, GRADE: Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development and Evaluation. Key words: Chinese herbal medicine, psoriasis, overview, AMSTAR 2, ROBIS, PRISMA, GRADE