ArticleJournal of pain research2026
Effectiveness and Safety of an Herbal Medicine Strategy for Chronic Low Back Pain: Protocol for a Prospective, Multicenter, Pragmatic, Randomized, Non-Inferiority Trial.
Article in Journal of pain research, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
10 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Introduction: Chronic low back pain (CLBP) is associated with reduced quality of life and increased risk of physical and psychological comorbidities. Current pharmacological and non-pharmacological treatments offer limited symptom relief and are often associated with poor patient compliance. Herbal medicines (HMs) have been shown to improve pain and function in patients with LBP. Objective: Given the wide variety of HMs used in practice, we designed a pragmatic clinical trial to evaluate the effectiveness and safety of an herbal medicine strategy (HMS) for CLBP. Methods and Analysis: This protocol describes a multicenter, pragmatic, parallel-group, assessor-blinded, non-inferiority randomized controlled trial with a 1:1 allocation ratio. A total of 150 participants with LBP (numeric rating scale [NRS] ≥ 5) persisting for at least 3 months will be enrolled. Participants in the HMS group will receive individualized HMS treatment for 30 days, while those in the non-pharmacological Korean medicine treatment (NPKM) group will receive NPKM, such as acupuncture, cupping, moxibustion, physiotherapy, twice weekly for 5 weeks. The primary outcomes will be the change in the NRS score for LBP and the Oswestry Disability Index from baseline to week 7. Secondary outcomes include NRS for radiating leg pain, visual analog scale for pain, Roland-Morris Disability Questionnaire-6, Patient Global Impression of Change, 5-Level EuroQol-5 Dimension, Health-related Quality of Life Instrument with 8 Items, and Patient Health Questionnaire-15. Cost data and adverse events will also be analyzed. Conclusion: This pragmatic non-inferiority trial was designed to assess whether the HMS is not clinically inferior to routine NPKM, reflecting real-world clinical practice to enhance the external applicability.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.