The pharmacology and mechanism of action of Went: a scoping review.

OBJECTIVE

The aim of this study is to review the recent studies on the pharmacology and mechanism of action of Went, analyze its medicinal value, and explore future research directions.

METHOD

A scoping review was conducted by searching the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), Wanfang database, VIP database, SinoMed, and PubMed from inception until September 2024. The basic information of the included studies, such as study types, disease types, main components, outcomes, and efficacy, was reviewed and summarized. Methodological quality was assessed using the SYRCLE's risk of bias assessment tool for animal studies and the Cochrane risk of bias assessment tool for clinical trials.

RESULTS

We identified 251 studies from the five databases. Among them, 153 were experimental studies, 70 were reviews, and 28 were clinical trials. Of the experimental studies, molecular studies accounted for the largest portion, totaling 80 (52%). Among the reviews, research progress accounted for the most, totaling 41 (59%). The clinical trials studied the effects of Went and its related Chinese patent medicines and preparations. Of these, 17 (61%) used Wentrelated Chinese patent medicines and preparations as interventions and 11 (39%) used traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) formulations of Went as interventions. In terms of methodological quality, both animal studies and clinical trials related to Went showed deficiencies in randomized allocation sequence generation, allocation concealment, and blinding methods.

CONCLUSION

We summarized existing studies on the active ingredients and effects of Went and found that it is necessary to improve the generation of random allocation sequences and the application of the blinding method in Went-related animal studies and clinical trials. When similar studies are conducted in the future, the specific methods of random assignment should be more clearly described, and blinding methods should be applied to improve the objectivity and accuracy of the studies, thereby providing a reference for selecting future research directions and establishing supporting evidence.