Oral turmeric/curcumin effects on inflammatory markers in chronic inflammatory diseases: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials

White CM, Pasupuleti V, Roman YM, Li Y, Hernandez AV · Pharmacological Research

Neither turmeric nor curcumin significantly lowered CRP (-2.71 mg/L, 95% CI -5.73 to 0.31), hsCRP (-1.44 mg/L, 95% CI -2.94 to 0.06), IL-1beta, IL-6 (-0.71 pg/mL, 95% CI -1.68 to 0.25) or TNF-alpha (-1.23 pg/mL, 95% CI -3.01 to 0.55), and turmeric and curcumin did not differ from each other.

Population

19 RCTs in rheumatic disease, dialysis-dependent kidney disease, metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular disease

Intervention

Oral turmeric (5 trials) or curcumin/curcuminoids (14 trials), 4 to 16 weeks

Comparator

Control

Limitations

High heterogeneity across all markers except hsCRP, and the population mixes very different diseases; it directly contradicts larger later pooled analyses (pmid-36804260, pmid-40615851), which is the point of keeping it.