Research

Hormonal

Traditional herbal medicines (THM) including silymarin, berberine, resveratrol, and curcumin show hepatoprotective effects in preclinical models and some clinical trials for NAFLD/NASH, but robust, large-scale randomized controlled trials confirming efficacy for progressive NASH are currently lacking.

While traditional herbal medicines like silymarin, berberine, resveratrol, and curcumin show promise in laboratory studies and some early clinical trials for fatty liver disease, they are not yet proven cures for advanced NASH. Patients should not rely on them as a substitute for standard medical care or lifestyle changes without consulting a doctor, as evidence for their effectiveness in humans is still mixed and large-scale trials are ongoing.

ModerateQualifiesMEDIUM confidence
Although there is still no compelling evidence from large-scale randomized controlled trails (RCTs) to support the therapeutic effects of THM... Thus, prior to the development of conclusive evidence-based effective pharmacological therapies, the clinical use of THM plays a non-negligible role in treating NASH.
Tingting Yan et al. · Acta Pharmaceutica Sinica B · 2019

Why this rating

The paper is a review summarizing various studies; it highlights promising preclinical data and some positive clinical signals but explicitly states the lack of conclusive large-scale RCTs.

Source

Herbal drug discovery for the treatment of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease

Tingting Yan et al. · Acta Pharmaceutica Sinica B · 2019

DOI 10.1016/j.apsb.2019.11.017

narrative_reviewCited 215×
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DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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