Evidence-based Chinese medicine for rheumatoid arthritis

Chinese medicine (CM) has long been adopted for treatment of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). CM approaches RA as it does for other diseases by holistic treatment, focusing on the whole body condition, and giving a variety of applications in accordance with the stage and symptoms of the disease. For seeking the best evidence of CM in making decisions for the care of RA individual patients, a number of clinical studies have been conducted in China to gain credibility with the researchers' unremitting efforts. But the heterogeneity in many of these clinical trials and the low quality of design in some previous studies present an obstacle to the meaningful systematic reviews (SR) and meta-analysis. Some favorable results in improvement of response to biomedicine and reduction of severe adverse reactions of conventional RA therapy should be carefully interpreted and need further research. Fortunately, more appropriate quality assurance and control of CM researches are raised for the implementation of CM in RA therapy to pave the evidence-based way. Guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of RA recommend evidence to the clinicians. In future, randomized controlled trials (RCT) with smart and flexible design as a good approach to evaluate the effectiveness will be widely used in CM for RA clinical study, with better research methods suitable for certain CM clinical researches. The development of evidence-based CM for RA will be full of challenge and opportunity, but we have full confidence.