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Effect of curcumin supplementation on disease severity in patients with liver cirrhosis: A randomized controlled trial

Masoud Nouri-vaskeh, Aida Malek Mahdavi, Hossein Afshan, L. Alizadeh, M. Zarei

Phytotherapy Research, 2020

70 participants · 52 citations

Abstract

Recent reports indicated that curcumin had beneficial effects in animal models of liver injury and cirrhosis. Current study aimed to investigate the effects of curcumin supplementation in patients with liver cirrhosis. In this randomized double‐blind placebo‐controlled trial, 70 patients with liver cirrhosis aged 20–70 years were randomly divided into two groups to receive 1,000 mg/day curcumin (n = 35) or placebo (n = 35) for 3 months. Model for end‐stage liver disease (MELD) (i), MELD, MELD‐Na, and Child–Pugh scores were used to assess the severity of cirrhosis. Sixty patients (29 in the curcumin group and 31 in the placebo group) completed the study. MELD(i) (15.55 ± 3.78 to 12.41 ± 3.07), MELD (15.31 ± 3.07 to 12.03 ± 2.79), MELD‐Na (15.97 ± 4.02 to 13.55 ± 3.51), and Child–Pugh (7.17 ± 1.54 to 6.72 ± 1.31) scores decreased significantly in the curcumin group after 3‐month intervention (p < .001, p < .001, p = .001, and p = .051, respectively), whereas they increased significantly in the placebo group (p < .001, p < .001, p < .001, p = .001, respectively). Significant differences were only observed between the two groups in MELD(i), MELD, MELD‐Na, and Child–Pugh scores after 3‐month intervention (p < .001 for all of them). In this pilot study, beneficial effects of curcumin supplementation were observed in decreasing disease activity scores and severity of cirrhosis in patients with cirrhosis.

How strong is the evidence?

Evidence Hub reads this as a randomized trial, done in people. Its evidence level is 2 of 5 (High · randomized trial). Randomized trials of a reasonable size are the strongest single-study design. Reported size: 70 participants or records.

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