Improving participant adherence in clinical research of traditional chinese medicine

Ensuring good participant adherence in clinical trials plays an important role in that poor adherence may jeopardize the internal validity of the trial. Improving adherence in clinical trials on traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has long been a concern for Chinese researchers who are conducting clinical trials. Drawing on from our past experiences in managing patient adherence in large-scale clinical trials, we identified factors that influence adherence and categorized them by sources into factors with respect to the trial protocol, on the part of the patients and the investigators. On this basis, we developed a series of ways to improve participants' adherence, while taking into account the characteristics of TCM trials, in the hope of providing reference for peer clinical researchers.