The Quality of Reporting of Randomized Controlled Trials of Traditional Chinese Medicine: A Survey of 13 Randomly Selected Journals from Mainland China

Adjunctive herbal medicine therapy for inflammatory bowel disease: A systematic review and meta-analysis

“…It is well known that studies failing to report the method used to generate the randomisation sequence or to conceal group assignment tend to overestimate the effect of intervention under investigation [63,64]. When we limited our analyses to studies which reported adequate randomisation and/or allocation concealment, the results were similar:…”

Traditional Chinese Herbal Medicine – East Meets West in Validation and Therapeutic Application

“…So as for TCM, randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of herbal medicine were not uncommon, at least in China. During 1999-2004, a total of 7,422 RCTs has been identified from 13 randomly selected journals published in Mainland China, and the number is kept increasing (Wang et al, 2007). However, by reviewing these RCTs, outcomes were discouraging, not because of the treatment outcomes themselves, but the poor qualities as assessed by using international standards, i.e.…”

“…the Jadad score scare and the Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) checklist, more than 90% of these studies were poorly designed or reported with poor scientific rigor (Gagnier et al, 2011;Wang et al, 2007;Wolsko et al, 2005;Zhong et al, 2010). Some essential RCT components, such as sample size calculation, randomization sequence, allocation concealment, implementation of the random-allocation sequence, analysis of intention-to-treat (ITT), lacking syndrome differentiation of TCM, and the use of placebo was not justified and was ethically contradictory, were not sufficiently described in the methodologies of the studies (Gagnier et al, 2011;Wang et al, 2007;Zhong et al, 2010). Even limiting to the RCTs published in English, many investigators have failed to provide proper characterization to the study herbs such as identity, purity, quality, strength, and composition in their articles (Wolsko et al, 2005).…”

The Context and Meaning of Placebos for Complementary Medicine

“…Over the past 40 years, at least 17,000 RCTs have been conducted in China investigating the effectiveness of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) [85,86] with the majority of these trials related to Chinese herbal medicine (CHM) [85]. However, whilst there is a vast and growing corpus of CHM research, its value as an evidence base has been compromised by a lack of methodological rigour and transparency [86].…”