Traditional Chinese medicine versus western medicine as used in China in the management of rheumatoid arthritis: a randomized, single-blind, 24-week study.

This study is designed to compare the efficacy and safety of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) with western medicine (WM) in the management of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). This is a 24-week, randomized, multicenter, single-blind study comparing TCM with WM (as used in China) carried out between June 2002 and December 2004 in nine research centers in China, involving 489 patients. Patients were randomized to receive TCM (n = 247), MTX and SSZ (n = 242).

[Thinking about the key points in developing guidelines for Chinese and integrated medical clinical therapy].

The author offered in this paper that in developing the guidelines for Chinese and integrated medical clinical therapy, the specialties of Chinese medicine and clinical needs should be considered, and put stress on the following key points: (1) give priorities to the diseases on which plentiful evidences and practical experiences have been achieved in researches; (2) set up the clinical issues of diseases from an integral view, with Chinese medicine syndromes subordinated to diseases; (3) in making choice of clinical questions, problems that clinicians and researchers concerned should be taken in to consideration; (4) adopt the concepts and methods of complex intervention and reflect prominently the preponderant holistic thinking of Chinese medicine; (5) intensify the cognition-centered basic research of Chinese medicine through combining "disease diagnosis" and "syndrome differentiation" to acquaint the rules of disease/syndrome transformation from the integral dynamic views; (6) use the guidance establishing process of Western medicine as reference to collect, identify, review and classify the evidences from modern literature, while for those from ancient literature, the content analyzing method should be followed; (7) make the contents of design methods perfect and put emphasis on the control and guarantee of quality.

[Systematic evaluation on clinical literature related with treatment of Parkinson's disease with traditional Chinese medicine].

Objective: To analyze the quality of scientific research design of clinical literature related with treatment of Parkinson's disease with traditional Chinese medicine, so as to objectively evaluate the therapeutic effect of TCM.

Methods: According to principles of evidence-based medicine, clinical epidemiology/design measurement evaluation (DME), the "Table of Systematic Evaluation of Quality and Information Collection for TCM Clinical Research Literature" were established and used to evaluate clinical control trial literature related with treatment of Parkinson's disease with TCM published during 1979 to 2000.

Results: The method of randomization was not described in 66.

[A Meta-analysis in multi-center random controlled clinical trials].

Objective: To study the center effect discrepancy in the multi-center clinical trials.

Methods: Two groups of data collected from the multi-center clinical trials were used. Data were processed by covariance analysis and Meta-analysis.