Randomized Clinical Trials of Traditional Chinese Medicines for Treating Ulcerative Colitis: A Scoping Review

Objective:Traditional Chinese medicines (TCMs) are efficacious against ulcerative colitis (UC). In recent years, the number of randomized clinical trials (RCTs) of TCM has increased. Thus, it is very important to summarize the basic characteristics, quality, and types of TCM interventions in published RCTs. This scoping review was performed to systematically identify and describe the current situations about RCTs of TCMs for treating UC. Hope to express the focus and specifics of nowadays research in TCM interventions in RCTs and evaluate their common disadvantages exposed to help advance in TCM researching. Materials and Methods:A scoping review was conducted according to the PRISMA extension for scoping reviews. We searched two English databases and four Chinese databases from the date of establishment of each database to January 2020. Data from RCTs focusing on any TCM treatment for patients with UC were extracted and evaluated. Selection and characterization were performed by two independent reviewers using predefined forms. All discrepancies were resolved by consensus discussion with a third reviewer. Microsoft Excel 2010 was used to extract the following data from the included studies:(1) basic information of the included studies including research ID, article title, publication language, journal, year of publication, and funding information;(2)patient information including gender, age, disease course, disease stage, severity, sample size; and (3) information on intervention measures,types of intervention measures, drug dosage forms, and treatment courses. Results:The search identified 2225 RCTs published between1987 and 2020. These studies covered 36 provinces in China. The time frame of the RCTs was 28 days in approximately one-third of the RCTs (647, 29.08%). Only one RCT was published in English. Nearly three-quarters of RCTs (1665, 74.83%) did not report the severity of the disease. Three types of interventions were included in the RCTs:pharmacotherapy (2028, 91.15%), nonpharmacotherapy (57, 2.56%),and a combination of the two (140, 6.29%). The administration modes of the intervention groups were evaluated. Drug therapy involved 12types of TCM dosage forms, which were decoctions, troches, powders, capsules, granules, pills, suppositories, ointments, injections, gels,oral liquids, and substitute tea according to the frequency of use. Nondrug intervention measures involved 10 treatment options, namely,acupuncture, moxibustion, hemospasia, auricular point, acupoint catgut embedding, acupoint injection, scrapping, tuina, acupoint application,and five-tone therapy according to the frequency of use. Most studies included in this review were low in quality. This underscores the need for improvement in the quality of trial methodology in TCM RCTs.