[Herbal CONSORT statement and standardization of reporting traditional Chinese drug trials]

Based on detailed explanation of the herbal CONSORT statement, and the consideration of the character of traditional Chinese drugs, to discuss the standardization of reporting traditional Chinese drug trials. The standards of reporting traditional Chinese drug trials are not consolidated yet. In the year 2006, Reporting Randomized, Controlled Trials of Herbal Interventions: An Elaborated CONSORT Statement was developed by the CONSORT group and published. This herbal CONSORT statement includes 5 parts, and totally 22 items, in which the items of participant criteria, intervention, control setting and outcomes, et al. are elaborated to be adaptable to herbal intervention trials. This herbal CONSORT statement has provided valuable basis for the development of standards of reporting traditional Chinese drug trials, though it is not completely adaptive to be the reporting standards in consideration of the background theory and the animal drugs and mineral drugs that traditional Chinese drugs contain. The proper reporting standards of traditional Chinese drug trials should take the different types of drugs and the different purposes of trials into consideration. The trial reports of drugs that must be applied under the instruction of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) theory should report participant criteria that include TCM syndrome differentiation and other important characters of TCM interventions.