Rationale and design of the Helping Ease Renal failure with Bupi Yishen compared with the Angiotensin II Antagonist Losartan (HERBAAL) trial: a randomized controlled trial in non-diabetes stage 4 chronic kidney disease.

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial looks at Losartan.

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a global public health problem.

Chinese Clinical Trial Registry Number: ChiCTR-TRC-10001518.

Who Took Part

The study group was 4 patients.

In this double blind, double dummy, randomized controlled trial (RCT), there will be 554 non-diabetes stage 4 CKD patients from 16 hospitals included and randomized into two groups: Chinese medicine (CM) group or losartan group.

All patients will receive basic conventional therapy.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized and double-blind study.

Because people in this Losartan study were split into groups at random, differences between the groups are less likely to reflect who happened to join each one.

Neither the patients nor the staff measuring them knew who was on Losartan, so expectations could not easily colour the readings.

Secondary outcomes include the incidence of endpoint events, liver and kidney function, urinary protein creatinine ratio, cardiovascular function and quality of life.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Angiotensin II Type 1 Receptor Blockers, Drugs, Chinese Herbal, Kidney, Losartan and Renal Insufficiency.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized and double-blind study of Losartan in 4 patients.

With fewer than 40 people, it is a small study, so it is better read as an early signal for further research than as a settled answer.

Results are reported in around 2 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2015 (BMC complementary and alternative medicine), a journal based in England.

More context: all human trials.