Acupuncture Times Your guide to acupuncture, Chinese herbal medicine and TCM — explore acupoints, herbs and formulas, plus the latest acupuncture research news.
Related Articles
This network meta-analysis examined whether standardised Chinese herbal medicine formulations could improve sleep quality in people aged 60 years and over who experience insomnia. Researchers searched eight databases up to February 2026 and identified nineteen randomised controlled trials involving 1,851 participants. The analysis compared several treatment approaches, including commercial Chinese polyherbal preparations, herbal decoctions, and conventional pharmacotherapy, both alone and in combination.
The results indicated that combining commercial Chinese polyherbal preparations with conventional therapy produced the greatest improvement in Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index scores compared with conventional therapy alone. These preparations also demonstrated the highest odds of achieving a positive clinical response. A preliminary analysis further suggested that Chinese herbal medicine may reduce serum interleukin-6 levels — a marker associated with age-related inflammation and neuroinflammation — though this finding was based on only a small number of studies and must be treated as exploratory.
The authors noted important limitations: several included trials raised concerns around blinding and outcome measurement, and the certainty of evidence for the inflammatory marker findings was low. The researchers emphasise that higher-quality, double-blind trials are needed before firm conclusions can be drawn about the anti-inflammatory mechanisms potentially underlying these benefits.
Conclusion: Chinese herbal medicine preparations, particularly when used alongside conventional pharmacotherapy, appear to offer meaningful improvements in sleep quality for older adults with insomnia, but the evidence warrants cautious interpretation pending more rigorous future trials.
Source: Liang R, Zhang X, Li H and colleagues. Frontiers in pharmacology (2026). View on PubMed (PMID 42630409) · doi:10.3389/fphar.2026.1827554
