Correlations Between Symptoms as Assessed in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and ACR20 Efficacy Response

Abstract

Symptoms including those not directly related to joints and those inquired about in TCM may have influence on the efficacy of therapy, and might merit further study to ascertain if they can be helpful to guide specific therapy.

Pattern Differentiation in Traditional Chinese Medicine Can Help Define Specific Indications for Biomedical Therapy in the Treatment of Rheumatoid Arthritis

“…The factors found were used to determine TCM hot and cold patterns in patients with RA. 7,8 Interestingly, the two groups obtained with factor analysis were the same as the hot and cold pattern in classical TCM pattern differentiation. However, the tongue appearance and pulse evaluation usually included in the criteria for TCM pattern differentiation were not included in this analysis because they are much more difficult to understand and duplicate.…”

“…Our previous study showed positive correlations between single TCM symptoms or combination TCM symptoms with efficacy in the treatment of RA. 2,7 The results suggested that further pattern differentiation of patients with RA based on TCM symptoms could increase treatment efficacy by specifying the indication for TCM therapy and biomedical therapy.…”

“…More details about the clinical trial were reported previously. 7 Patients were randomly assigned in a 1:1 ratio to receive a biomedical combination therapy or TCM therapy. Only patients treated with the biomedical combination therapy were included for analysis in this study.…”

“…7,8 In this article, we explored how TCM pattern differentiation can help identify a subset of patients with RA who will respond optimally to biomedical therapy.…”

Predicting and verifying outcome of Tripterygium wilfordii Hook F. based therapy in rheumatoid arthritis: from open to double-blinded randomized trial

“…Furthermore, in our previous multicenter RCT, some symptoms, including those inquired based on TCM pattern classification theory were indicated to have potential correlation with the effect and safety of TwHF based therapy in RA patients24252627. These findings merit further study to ascertain the accurate baseline symptomatic predictors of response to the TwHF based therapy in light of TCM experiences thus to help clinicians to make evidence-based decisions which might maximize the benefits from treatment by targeting subgroups of patients most likely to respond.…”