Perspectives about complementary and alternative medicine in rheumatology

Complementary and alternative medical (CAM) treatments are considered nonmainstream therapies. The popularity and widespread usage of CAM reflects the inadequacies of the current understanding and management of rheumatic and musculoskeletal (and other) diseases despite significant progress. Better science in the future will relegate certain CAM therapies to the margins of medicine or to history and perhaps see the adoption of others into mainstream medicine. Despite the recent increased interest in CAM, particularly for rheumatic diseases, few clinically important contributions have emerged thus far.