Chinese Medicine treatment for recurrent urinary tract infection: Randomized controlled trial

• To determine if ba zheng powder can be an alternative treatment for RUTI, the researchers conducted a randomized double-blind trial.
• They recruited a total of 122 eligible females from a hospital and two community health centers.
• They used a blocked randomization scheme to determine which participants would receive ba zheng for four weeks and which participants would receive antibiotics for one week, followed by a placebo for three weeks.
• They evaluated the clinical cure rate and the microbiological cure and recurrence after treatment.
• The researchers reported that the clinical cure rate by the intent-to-treat approach was 90.2 percent for the ba zheng group and 82 percent for the antibiotics group.
• They also found that bacteria were cleared from 88.5 percent of patients in the ba zheng group and 82 percent in the antibiotics group.
• In addition, they observed during a 6-month follow-up that the recurrence rate of UTI in recovered patients was only 9.1 percent in the ba zheng group, while it was 14 percent in the antibiotics group.

Based on these results, the researchers concluded that ba zheng powder is a good alternative treatment for RUTI.