Objective To systematically evaluate the effectiveness of platelet increasing capsule combined with hormone in treating idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura (ITP). Methods Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of ITP treated by platelet increasing capsule combined with hormone were electronically searched from PubMed (1966 to 2012), The Cochrane Library (CENTRAL, Issue 3, 2012), CBM (1978 to 2012), CNKI (1979 to 2012), WanFang Data (1998 to 2012), and VIP (1991 to 2012). References of included studies were also retrieved. The literature was independently screened according to exclusion and inclusion criteria by two researchers independently and meta-analysis was conducted using RevMan 5.1 software after data extraction and quality assessment. Results 10 RCTs were included involving 588 patients. The results meta-analysis showed that, the group which was treated by platelet increasing capsule combined with hormone was superior to the hormone alone group in the aspects of overall effectiveness rate (RR=1.18, 95%CI 1.06 to 1.32, P=0.003), the significant effectiveness rate (RR=1.57, 95%CI 1.29 to 1.91, Plt;0.000 01), blood platelet count (MD=21.54, 95%CI 13.85 to 29.23, Plt;0.000 01), and the recurrence rate (RR=0.49, 95%CI 0.34 to 0.69, Plt;0.000 01) which was lower. Conclusion Current evidence has showed that platelet increasing capsule combined with hormone in treating ITP is better than hormone alone. However, more high quality RCTs are needed to verify the above conclusion in future.