Effects of honey dressing for the treatment of DFUs: A systematic review

BackgroundHoney dressing has been applied to clinical practice for many types of disease for centuries. Many researchers have studied the effects of honey dressing for the treatment of DFUs (diabetic foot ulcers), and no systematic review has considered effects of honey dressing on DFUs. A systematic review performed to objectively evaluate the effectiveness of honey dressing in the treatment of DFUs.MethodsWe include all original studies found for the key words honey and diabetic foot ulcers. Mean effect sizes and confidence intervals are pooled from study effect sizes according to standard methods, and these are considered for various common types of honey dressing interventions separately.ResultsA total of 4 RCTs involving 258 participants were included, and 3 trails involving 228 participants met the quantitative analysis and 1 study involving 30 participants met qualitative analysis. Results of meta and descriptive analyses showed that total treatment time, Mean purge time of ulcers, ratio of purging germ, healed area of ulcers in honey dressing group are better than that of control group, respectively, and with statistically significant differences.ConclusionsHoney dressing was superior of traditional dressing for treatment of DFUs. Due to limitations in the quantity of published studies, this conclusion has yet to be carried out in large, multicenter study to validate.