BackgroundTraditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has been widely applied for cancer care in China. There have been a large number of controlled clinical studies published in Chinese literature, yet no systematic searching and analysis has been done. This study summarizes the current evidence of controlled clinical studies of TCM for cancer.MethodsWe searched all the controlled clinical studies of TCM therapies for all kinds of cancers published in Chinese in four main Chinese electronic databases from their inception to November 2011. We bibliometrically analyzed the included studies and assessed the reporting quality.ResultsA total of 2964 reports (involving 253,434 cancer patients) including 2385 randomized controlled trials and 579 non-randomized controlled studies were included. The top seven cancer types treated were lung cancer, liver cancer, stomach cancer, breast cancer, esophagus cancer, colorectal cancer and nasopharyngeal cancer by both study numbers and case numbers. The majority of studies (72%) applied TCM therapy combined with conventional treatment, whilst fewer (28%) applied only TCM therapy in the experimental groups. Herbal medicine was the most frequently applied TCM therapy (2677 studies, 90.32%). The most frequently reported outcome was clinical symptom improvement (1667 studies, 56.24%) followed by biomarker indices (1270 studies, 42.85%), quality of life (1129 studies, 38.09%), chemo/radiotherapy induced side effects (1094 studies, 36.91%), tumor size (869 studies, 29.32%) and safety (547 studies, 18.45%). Completeness and adequacy of reporting appeared to improve with time.ConclusionsData from controlled clinical studies of TCM therapies in cancer treatment is substantial, and different therapies are applied either as monotherapy or in combination with conventional medicine. Reporting of controlled clinical studies should be improved based on the CONSORT and TREND Statements in future. Further studies should address the most frequently used TCM therapy for common cancers and outcome measures should address survival, relapse/metastasis and quality of life.

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A photoacid that possesses a metastable acidic state induced by visible light is studied. Previous work showed that this photoacid can reversibly produce a large pH change capable of controlling chemical reactions, altering material properties, and killing bacteria. In this work, we studied the relaxation kinetics of the metastable acidic state in different solvents including water, ethanol, and DMSO. In all of these solvents, the kinetic data can be fitted well to a second-order rate equation, which indicates that protonation is involved in the rate-limiting step. The rate constants in water, ethanol, and DMSO are 73, 1.6, and 0.034 M(-1) s(-1), respectively. The slow relaxation in DMSO allowed us to fully characterize the structure of the metastable acidic state using proton NMR. We also measured the quantum yield of the photoreaction, which is as high as 0.37.

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Polyether-block-amide (Pebax)/graphene oxide (GO) mixed-matrix membranes (MMMs) were prepared with a solution casting method, and their gas-separation performance and mechanical properties were investigated. Compared with the pristine Pebax membrane, the crystallinity of the Pebax/GO MMMs showed a little increase. The incorporation of GO induced an increase in the elastic modulus, whereas the strain at break and tensile strength decreased. The apparent activation energies (E p ) of CO 2 , N 2 , H 2 , and CH 4 permeation through the Pebax/GO MMMs increased because of the greater difficulty of polymer chain rotation. The E p value of CO 2 changed from 16.5 kJ/mol of the pristine Pebax to 23.7 kJ/mol of the Pebax/GO MMMs with 3.85 vol % GO. Because of the impermeable nature of GO, the gas permeabilities of the Pebax/GO MMMs decreased remarkably with increasing GO content, in particular for the larger gases. The CO 2 permeability of the Pebax/GO MMMs with 3.85 vol % GO decreased by about 70% of that of the pristine Pebax membrane. Rather than the Maxwell model, the permeation properties of the Pebax/GO MMMs could be described successfully with the Lape model, which considered the influence of the geometrical shape and arrangement pattern of GO on the gas transport.

Background: Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is widely used for cancer treatment in China. Many support its use in treatment for cancer, yet scientific evidence for the effect of TCM needs to be established. Material and Methods: In this review case reports on cancer patients treated by TCM therapies are included. Search runs were conducted in 4 main Chinese databases till December 2009. Results: A total of 716 reports involving 1,198 cancer patients were identified and summarized. Top 5 of the reported cancers treated with TCM were lung cancer (14.44%; 173 patients), leukemia (14.11%; 169 patients), stomach cancer (10.85%; 130 patients), liver cancer (10.18%; 122 patients) and esophageal cancer (7.35%; 88 patients). In the majority of cases (66.44%; 772) combined treatments of Chinese and conventional medicine were applied. The use of herbal medicine was highly prevalent (98.50%; 1,168 patients), and the typical administration was an individually tailored treatment according to the pattern differentiation of symptoms (74.21%; 889 patients); the use of acupuncture was relatively rare (1.8%; 22 patients). Symptom improvement was the most frequently reported outcome (84.72%; 1,015 patients). Only 15 studies (2.1%) were structurally reported. Detailed information on patients’ demography, pathologically confirmed diagnosis and safety was given in 275 (22.95%), 692 (57.76%) and 10 (0.83%) reports, respectively. Conclusion: The amount of information from case reports of TCM therapies in cancer is rich and can be valuable for the preliminary evaluation of TCM and for the planning of further clinical trials in cancer treatment. However, the quality of the reports was generally poor and we recommend that case reports should be published in a structured manner.

BackgroundClinical trials on Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) should be registered in a publicly accessible international trial register and report on all outcomes. We systematically assessed and evaluated TCM trials in registries with their subsequent publications.ObjectiveTo describe the characteristics of TCM trials, estimate bias risk and outcome-reporting bias in clinical trials.Data sources and study selectionFifteen trial registries were searched from their inception to July 2012 to identify randomised trials on TCM including Chinese herbs, acupuncture and/or moxibustion, cupping, tuina, qigong, etc.Data extractionWe extracted data including TCM specialty and treated disease/conditions from the registries and searched for subsequent publications in PubMed and Chinese databases. We compared information in the registries of completed trials with any publications focusing on study design, sample size, randomisation, bias risk including reporting bias from the register protocol.Results1096 registered randomised trials were identified evaluating TCM, of which 505 were completed studies (46.1%). The most frequent conditions were pain (13.3%), musculoskeletal (11.7%), nervous (8.7%), digestive (7.1%), circulatory (6.5%), respiratory (6.3%), mental and behavioural disorders (6.2%) and cancer (6.0%). The trial register data identified parallel, phase II/III randomised trials with sample size estimations and blinding, but limited information about randomisation (sequence generation and allocation concealment). Comparing trial registration data of 115 completed trials (22.8%) with their subsequent 136 publications, inconsistencies were identified in one or more of the following: sample size (11%), outcome assessor blinding (37.5%), primary outcomes (29%) and safety (28%) reporting.ConclusionsIncreasing numbers of clinical trials investigating a variety of TCM interventions have been registered in international trial registries. The study design of registered TCM trials has improved in estimating sample size, use of blinding and placebos. However, selective outcome reporting is widespread and similar to conventional medicine and therefore study conclusions should be interpreted with caution.