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Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness and safety of Chinese herbal medicine (CHM) in the treatment of subacute thyroiditis.<br>Methods: Randomized controlled trials found in PubMed, Cochrane Library, and three Chinese databases were selected. RevMan 5.2 software was used to analyze the data with relative risk or mean difference, expressed with 95% of confidence interval. The quality of trials was assessed and graded the quality of evidence with GRADE profiler software.<br>Results: Twenty one studies were included. CHM was superior to Western Medicine (include prednisone and NSAIDs) in abating fever, relieving thyroid pain, recovering blood sedimentation, improving thyroid function, and preventing hypothyroidism (<b>P</b><0.05), while no statistical differences were found in eliminating goiter and reducing relapse rate. CHM plus Western Medicine were superior to Western Medicine in abating fever, relieving thyroid pain, eliminating goiter, and reducing relapse rate, while no statistical differences (<b>P</b>>0.05) were found in recovering blood sedimentation and improving thyroid function. The incidence of adverse reactions in treatment group was lower than that in control group (relative risk was 0.12 and 95% confidence interval was 0.03-0.51). The methodological quality of trials is generally poor with a high risk of bias.<br>Conclusion: CHM (particularly CHM combined with Western Medicine) used to treat subacute thyroiditis may improve clinical symptoms and signs, reduce relapse rate, and alleviate the side effects of hormones. Due to poor methodological quality of included trials, further more high-quality studies are warranted to confirm the effectiveness and safety of CHM.
To evaluate the correlation between the body constitution types of Tibetan medicine and traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). The cluster sampling method was employed to recruit participants from a university in the Tibet Autonomous Region. Tibetan medicine and TCM questionnaires were respectively used to assess the participants' constitution information. Descriptive statistics were applied to analyze the baseline and constitution characteristics of the participants. Two-factor correlation analysis and the paired chi-square test were applied to analyze the correlation between Tibetan and TCM constitution types. Data from 466 Tibetan students were analyzed. The mean scores of the rlung, mkhris pa, and bad kan constitution types in Tibetan medicine were 43.2 (11.1), 42.1 (10.1), and 45.0 (8.0), respectively; participants with the three-factor convergence body constitution type accounted for 13.7% of the whole population. Among the TCM constitution types, qi stagnation was the most common (21.5%), followed by the balance type (16.5%); the other constitutions detected were qi deficiency, yin deficiency, and yang deficiency. The rate of consistency for the identification of the three-factor convergence constitution in Tibetan medicine and the balance constitution in TCM was 89.1%, with a Kappa coefficient of 0.57 (<ce:italic>P</ce:italic> > .05). The rlung constitution in Tibetan medicine was associated with the yin deficiency, yang deficiency, and blood stasis constitutions in TCM. The mkhris pa constitution in Tibetan medicine was associated with the damp heat and yin deficiency constitutions in TCM. The bad kan constitution in Tibetan medicine was associated with the phlegm dampness, qi deficiency, and yin deficiency constitutions in TCM. There is a correlation between the body constitution types of Tibetan medicine and TCM. The reliability and validity of the Questionnaire for Tibetan Medicine Constitution requires improvement, and more studies with larger sample sizes and more varied populations are warranted to verify the correlation between Tibetan medicine and TCM constitutions.
The evaluation on clinical efficacy of traditional Tibetan medicine (TTM) is an important scientific subject during the development of TTM. Firstly, the authors introduced the current situations and problems in evaluation on clinical efficacy of traditional Tibetan medicine both at home and abroad in this study. Secondly, they compared the similarities and differences between TTM and traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) in evaluation on clinical efficacy, define their differences in details but not in nature, and proposed that TTM could selectively learn TCM's experiences in clinical research and build a specific methodology system for evaluation on clinical efficacy according to its own characteristics. Thirdly, they discussed the methodological challenges in evaluation on clinical efficacy of TTM, including the pending clinical research guidelines and disease diagnosis standards according to its own characteristics. Finally, they propound some suggestions for promoting the evaluation on clinical efficacy of TTM, including the comprehensive application of multiple research methods, overall research-based evaluation on efficacy of TTM complex intervention and selection of accepted and objective outcome indexes for efficacy evaluation.
• TCM therapies showed potential positive effect for alleviating fatigue symptoms. • Whether TCM could improve the QOL of patients is still inconclusive. • We could not draw a firm conclusion about the safety of TCM on CFS.<br>Background: There is no curative treatment for chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is widely used in the treatment of CFS in China.<br>Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness and safety of TCM for CFS.<br>Methods: The protocol of this review is registered at PROSPERO. We searched six main databases for randomized clinical trials (RCTs) on TCM for CFS from their inception to September 2013. The Cochrane risk of bias tool was used to assess the methodological quality. We used RevMan 5.1 to synthesize the results.<br>Results: 23 RCTs involving 1776 participants were identified. The risk of bias of the included studies was high. The types of TCM interventions varied, including Chinese herbal medicine, acupuncture, qigong, moxibustion, and acupoint application. The results of meta-analyses and several individual studies showed that TCM alone or in combination with other interventions significantly alleviated fatigue symptoms as measured by Chalder's fatigue scale, fatigue severity scale, fatigue assessment instrument by Joseph E. Schwartz, Bell's fatigue scale, and guiding principle of clinical research on new drugs of TCM for fatigue symptom. There was no enough evidence that TCM could improve the quality of life for CFS patients. The included studies did not report serious adverse events.<br>Conclusions: TCM appears to be effective to alleviate the fatigue symptom for people with CFS. However, due to the high risk of bias of the included studies, larger, well-designed studies are needed to confirm the potential benefit in the future.
OBJECTIVE: To introduce and explore the current status and prospects of traditional Tibetan medicine (TTM) in China.METHODS: Government websites, national statistics, and authoritative papers from journal and government daily were fully searched. Further data were gathered by related experts.
RESULTS: With the implementation of policies on growing TTM, there have been improvements in TTM's health care, scientific research, education, and pharmacy industry. TTM hospitals contribute to the health service system in Tibet Autonomous Region and other four Tibetan regions; TTM education has been incorporated into national education system in China; the number of scientific researches on TTM funded by the government is increasing year by year; Tibetan medicines become available to more people with the development of TTM pharmacy industry.
CONCLUSION: TTM is well preserved and developed in China, and more efforts should be taken to promote its spread and development.
Traditional Tibetan medicine (TTM) plays an important role in the health care system of China. Little is known about the current evidence of TTM's clinical research in China. Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of TTM therapies conducted in China were searched in PubMed, Cochrane Library, two major Chinese electronic databases, and two Tibetan medical journals from their inception to June 2014. Qualitative analysis and reporting quality assessment were performed. The protocol was registered in PROSPERO (No: CRD42013006881). A total of 227 RCTs involving 29,179 participants were included. They were heterogeneous in terms of study size, sites, treated conditions, interventions, measured outcomes, and quality. 103 diseases or symptoms were reported in the included trials. TTM interventions used in the RCTs consisted of drug treatments and non-drug treatments including bloodletting and moxibustion, in which Tibetan patent medications for oral use were tested in 175 studies and for external use in 47 studies. 93.8% (213/227) of the trials reported superior effect of TTM over control interventions. Only 7.9% (18/227) of the trials described details of random sequence generation, 3.5% (8/227) described details of blind. Clinical research in TTM in China covers whole medical systems. Data from RCTs showed that TTM might have potential benefit for the management of many diseases. Studies on definitive health outcomes could be systematically reviewed in order to provide more information on TTM's efficacy. More efforts should be made to improve the quality of RCTs in China and support TTM's further clinical applications.