IntroductionRespiratory illness, often associated with cough and sputum, is frequent. In Brazil, herbal medicines are often recommended as a first-line treatment for respiratory illness. There exists uncertainty regarding the effectiveness of these treatments. No systematic review has evaluated Brazilian medicinal plants (BMP) to treat upper respiratory tract and bronchial illness (URTI).Methods and analysisWe will conduct a systematic review and, if appropriate, a series of meta-analyses evaluating the safety and effectiveness of BMP for URTI. Eligible randomised controlled trials and observational studies will enrol adult or paediatric patients presenting with URTI treated by BMP approved by the Brazilian Health Surveillance Agency compared with placebo, no treatment or an alternative therapy. Our search will include the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), which contains the Cochrane Acute Respiratory Illness Group's Specialized Register; MEDLINE; EMBASE; CINAHL (Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature); Web of Science; AMED; LILACS; CAB abstracts; clinical trial.gov; the WHO Trial Register and the Brazilian thesis database (CAPES) without any language restrictions. Outcomes of interest are time to resolution of clinical symptoms and/or signs (cough, sputum production or activity limitations), severity of symptoms prior to resolution and major/minor adverse events. Teams of reviewers will, independently and in duplicate, screen titles and abstracts and the complete full text to determine eligibility. For eligible studies, reviewers will perform data abstraction and assess risk of bias of eligible trials. When appropriate, we will conduct meta-analyses. We will also assess the quality of body of evidence (confidence in estimates of effect) for each of the outcomes using the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) approach.Ethics and disseminationThe systematic review will be published in a peer-reviewed journal. Brief reports of review findings will be disseminated directly to appropriate audiences via email and other modes of communication. The review will guide healthcare practice and policy in Brazil.Trial registration numberProspero CRD42014007057.

Objective: To evaluate the efficacy of pharmaceutical care in improving outcomes of Brazilian outpatients with type 2 diabetes mellitus. Methods: In this single-blind, controlled trial, 71 outpatients were randomized into two groups: pharmaceutical care intervention (managed using pharmacotherapy follow-up protocol); and control (managed using standard dispensing procedures). Outcomes included hospitalization, severe complication (retinopathy, renal insufficiency, hypoglycemia, coronaropathy or foot lesion), and the values of A1c hemoglobin (HbA1c), capillary glycaemia (CG), blood pressure (BP), total cholesterol (TC) and body mass index (BMI). All patients were followed for 12 months and drug-related problems (DRP) were described in intervention group. The groups were compared using the Student´s t-test, Tukey-Kramer, Chi-square and Fisher exact tests. Results: No significant difference in baseline clinical characteristics of the intervention (n= 36) and control groups (n= 35) (p>0.05). The groups did not differ for the outcome hypoglycemia, CG, BP, HbA1c, TC and BMI (p>0.05), but CG and HbA1c levels decreased at 3, 6 and 12 months, in both groups (p≤0.05). A total of 56 DRP were observed in intervention group and the pharmacist resolved approximately 60% of these. Conclusion: Improvements in the glycemic parameters of outpatients with type 2 diabetes mellitus attended within a community pharmacy were observed. Studies involving larger samples are needed to confirm the benefits of pharmacotherapy follow-up care for key clinical outcomes in these patients. The trial was registered in Clinicaltrials.gov: Record NCT03196336.