Traditional Chinese medicine treatment for COVID-19: An overview of systematic reviews and meta-analyses.

Background: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a rapidly spreading disease that has caused an extensive burden to the world. Consequently, a large number of clinical trials have examined the efficacy of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) for treating and preventing COVID-19, with coinciding proliferation of reviews summarizing these studies.

Objective: This study aimed to evaluate the methodological quality and evidence quality of systematic reviews and meta-analyses on the efficacy of TCM.

Dendrimer-coupled sonophoresis-mediated transdermal drug-delivery system for diclofenac.

The purpose of the present study was to develop a novel transdermal drug-delivery system comprising a polyamidoamine dendrimer coupled with sonophoresis to enhance the permeation of diclofenac (DF) through the skin. The novel transdermal drug-delivery system was developed by using a statistical Plackett-Burman design. Hairless male Wistar rat skin was used for the DF-permeation study.

Epidemiology and microbiology of nosocomial bloodstream infections: analysis of 482 cases from a retrospective surveillance study.

In many traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) hospitals, most patients are elderly with chronic diseases. Nosocomial bloodstream infections (nBSIs) are an important cause of morbidity and mortality. A retrospective surveillance study was performed to examine the epidemiology and microbiology of nBSIs in a TCM hospital from 2009 to 2011.

[A blind technique used in randomized controlled trials of treatment based on changes of syndromes].

Treatment based on syndrome differentiation is an essential feature of traditional Chinese medical diagnosis. The interventions based on changes of syndrome types in randomized controlled trials are complicated, leading to the difficulty of blind method enforcement. This article described a double-blind method.

[The application of single-arm clinical trials with objective performance criteria in clinical research of traditional Chinese medicine].

Clinical research of Chinese medicine, due to its own features, is not suitable to be studied by randomized controlled trial methods in some cases. The single-arm clinical trials with objective performance criteria could be taken as a more ideal alternative method. In this paper the basic principles of single-arm clinical trials with objective performance criteria was introduced.