OBJECTIVE:To systematically investigate the clini-cal effectiveness and safety of traditional Chinese herbs (TCHs) as an alternative to conventional med-icine (CM) in children with cough variant asthma(CVA).METHODS:Randomized controlled trial (RCT) stud-ies that were published from their inceptions to March 31,2020,were identified from the electronic databases of China National Knowledge Infrastruc-ture,Wangfang,PubMed,and Cochrane Central Li-brary.The primary outcome of the review was the total effective rate (TER),and the secondary out-comes were immunoglobulin E (IgE),peak expirato-ry flow (PEF),adverse drug reactions,and relapse rates of interventions.RESULTS:For the Meta-analysis,13 studies involv-ing 992 children with CVA were included.In terms of TER and IgE,the experimental interventions of TCH,when compared with the control interven-tions of CM,on pediatric CVA were found to be sig-nificantly effective (P ＜ 0.0001),whereas for spirom-etry,PEF was not significantly improved in the TCH group (P =0.48).The incident rates of adverse drug reaction and relapse were found to be significantly lower in the TCH group than those in the CM group(P =0.02 and P ＜ 0.0001,respectively).CONCLUSION:Compared with CM therapy,the ef-fects of TCH therapy on pediatric CVA were signifi-cantly beneficial in terms of TER and IgE,but not for PEF,and the methodological quality of included studies was poor.Therefore,the results should be interpreted with caution.More randomized con-trolled trials with rigorous experimental methodol-ogies are required for objectivity in the future.