SynthesisBMC complementary medicine and therapies2020
Problems lowering the study quality in traditional medicine, introspection from an example of meta-analysis of acupuncture.
Synthesis in BMC complementary medicine and therapies, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed, 17 citations in OpenAlex.
- Acupuncture with different frequencies for tobacco dependence: a randomized controlled trial.Journal of traditional Chinese medicine = Chung i tsa chih ying wen pan · 2025Trial
- Effectiveness of human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived β-like cell/islet transplantation in animal models of diabetes: A meta-analysis of preclinical studies.Global health & medicine · 2026Review
- Digitally Assisted Clinical Decision-Making in Traditional Chinese Medicine: Comparative Study of 5 Large Language Models.JMIR formative research · 2026Article
- Integration of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Psychotherapy in Mental Health: A Narrative Review of Mechanisms, Clinical Evidence, and Future Directions.Neuropsychiatric disease and treatment · 2026Review
- Innovative Statistical Model Uncover Effective Herbal Medicines Among Personalized Treatment Plans in Persian Medicine: A Small-Scale Study in Type 2 Diabetes.Journal of integrative and complementary medicine · 2024Observational
- Web-Based Platform for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses of Traditional Chinese Medicine: Platform Development Study.JMIR formative research · 2024Article
- Research hotspot and frontier analysis of traditional Chinese medicine in asthma using bibliometric methods from 1991 to 2021.The journal of allergy and clinical immunology. Global · 2022Review
- Role of Parameter Setting in Electroacupuncture: Current Scenario and Future Prospects.Chinese journal of integrative medicine · 2022Review
- A Bibliometric Analysis of Acupuncture Therapy in the Treatment of Primary Dysmenorrhea from 2001 to 2021.Journal of pain research · 2022Review
- Cerebral areas affected by unilateral acupuncture on SP3 in healthy volunteers: An explorative resting-state fMRI study.Brain and behavior · 2021Article
- The Efficacy of Long-Term Chinese Herbal Medicine Use on Lung Cancer Survival Time: A Retrospective Two-Center Cohort Study with Propensity Score Matching.Evidence-based complementary and alternative medicine : eCAM · 2021Article
- Pharmacologic Treatment of Restless Legs Syndrome.Current neuropharmacology · 2021Review
- Verification of the Efficacy and Safety of Qi-Replenishing Chinese Medicine in Treating Prediabetes: A Meta-Analysis and Literature Review.Evidence-based complementary and alternative medicine : eCAM · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
9 authors at 1 institution in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundMost randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of traditional medicine (such as traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), psychotherapy or behavioral therapy, and dietary interventions, etc.) have reported that they could not provide convincing evidence to support the efficacy because of the low quality of their studies. Here, we aimed to determine the underlying problems of the study quality using standards of evidence-based medicine (EBM) to evaluate the efficacy of traditional medicine.
methodsWe conducted an example of meta-analysis to evaluate the efficacy of acupuncture, a classical treatment of TCM, for treatment of intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH). The quality of the included studies was evaluated by using a Jadad score.
resultsA total of 24 Chinese RCTs that enrolled 1815 patients with ICH were included. Although the results suggested that acupuncture had good efficacy for relief of neurological deficits and improvement of the activities of daily living despite the high heterogeneity of the included studies, the low quality of the included literature reduced the worthiness of the evidence. Two systematic problems (lack of blinding and allocation concealment and high heterogeneity) and one non-systematic problem (lack of reports on adverse events and follow-up) of the TCM studies were found in this illustrational meta-analysis. We believed that other interventions of traditional medicine also suffer from these problems.
conclusionsNon-systematic problems can be improved by perfecting the experimental design, educating the researcher, and improving the reporting system. However, systematic problems are derived from the characteristics of traditional medicine that are difficult to be corrected. We propose that adoption of objective indexes might be a better solution to improve the systematic problems of traditional medicine. We summarized the problems and the underlying solutions, which may contribute to improve the study quality of systematic review in traditional medicine, strictly complying with the principles of EBM.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.