Chinese Journal of New Drugs and Clinical Remedies 2007;26(5):321-327

Effects of neurotropin on neuropathic pain: a pilot systematic review

Fang LIU ; Yingsheng XU ; Suodi ZHAI

Keywords

neurotropin; systems analysis; neuropathic pain

Country

China

Language

Chinese

Abstract

AIM: To evaluate the efficacy and safety of neurotropin in the treatment of neuropathic pain.METHODS: A systematic literature search was performed in biomedical database including MEDLINE,EMBASE, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, CBM and CNKI. All studies focused on the clinical controlled trials, especially randomized controlled trials (RCTs) . The outcome measures included efficacy,life quality, cost of the treatment and adverse reactions. Quality assessments of clinical trials were evaluated with Jadad Score. Meta-analysis of included studies was performed with Revman software. RESULTS: Twenty-six clinical trials were included. Jadad Score of 24 trials was less than 3, which indicated the poor quality of the trials. None of the clinical trials evaluated the changes in life quality and cost related to neurotropin treatment.Meta analysis of 11 trials indicated neurotropin was more effective than placebo or blank, and the odds ratio of efficacy was 3.84 [2.68, 5.50] . The combining effect of 6 RCTs showed that neurotropin decreased the pain scores measured by Visual Analog Scale significantly compared with placebo or blank, the weighted mean difference (WMD) was -1.76 [-2.31, -1.21] . The pooled effects of the trials comparing neurotropin with other pain relieving drugs such as earbamazepine or NSAIDs also showed positive effect favored neurotropin.Neurotropin had no more adverse reactions than placebo, carbamazepine or NSAIDs, and the pooled risk difference was -0.01 [-0.04, 0.02] . CONCLUSION: According to present evidence, neurotropin may be effective and safe in the treatment of neuropathic pain. However, the poor quality of the studies decreases the persuasion of the results. Large-scale and well-designed RCTs with enough follow-ups should be carried out to provide further evidence for the use of neurotropin in neuropathie pain.