| Recent reports indicated that curcumin had beneficial effects in animal models of
liver injury and cirrhosis. Current study aimed to investigate the effects of curcumin
supplementation in patients with liver cirrhosis. In this randomized double-blind
placebo-controlled trial, 70 patients with liver cirrhosis aged 20–70 years were randomly divided into two groups to receive 1,000 mg/day curcumin (n = 35) or placebo
(n = 35) for 3 months. Model for end-stage liver disease (MELD) (i), MELD, MELD-Na,
and Child–Pugh scores were used to assess the severity of cirrhosis. Sixty patients
(29 in the curcumin group and 31 in the placebo group) completed the study.
MELD(i) (15.55 ± 3.78 to 12.41 ± 3.07), MELD (15.31 ± 3.07 to 12.03 ± 2.79), MELDNa (15.97 ± 4.02 to 13.55 ± 3.51), and Child–Pugh (7.17 ± 1.54 to 6.72 ± 1.31) scores
decreased significantly in the curcumin group after 3-month intervention (p < .001,
p < .001, p = .001, and p = .051, respectively), whereas they increased significantly in
the placebo group (p < .001, p < .001, p < .001, p = .001, respectively). Significant differences were only observed between the two groups in MELD(i), MELD, MELD-Na,
and Child–Pugh scores after 3-month intervention (p < .001 for all of them). In this
pilot study, beneficial effects of curcumin supplementation were observed in decreasing disease activity scores and severity of cirrhosis in patients with cirrhosis. |