• The Journal of Korean Medicine Ophthalmology and Otolaryngology and Dermatology
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.55-69
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• 2020

Objectives : The purpose of this study is to analyze research trends on the effects of catgut-embedding therapy on allergic rhinitis. Methods : We searched potentially relevant randomized controlled trials using various electronic databases and extracted data using a standardized form. Results : Finally, 11 studies were selected and analyzed. All studies were conducted in China and the number of studies has increased especially in recent 3 years. 11 studies compared catgut-embedding therapy with usual care, acupuncture, sham catgut-embedding therapy. Most studies showed that catgut-embedding therapy was effective and had long lasting effect compared with comparison group. Conclusions : All studies were conducted in China and it is necessary to review its evidence for clinical application in Korea. Further studies are needed on this topic in order to demonstrate the effectiveness and safety clearly.

• The Journal of Pediatrics of Korean Medicine
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.82-95
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• 2021

Objectives The purpose of this study is to analyze clinical studies on the effectiveness of TCM (traditional Chinese medicine) for pompholyx treatment and provide evidence for Korean medicine use. Methods Randomized controlled trials (RCT) which used TCM as a treatment for pompholyx were searched in China National Infrastructure (CNKI) platform. The risk of bias of studies was assessed by using Cochrane risk of bias (RoB) 2.0 tool. Results The selected 10 RCTs showed that the experimental group treated with either TCM alone or with a combination of TCM and Western medicine showed more significant therapeutic effect compared to the control group which Western medicine alone. Conclusions Based on the studies from China, TCM may be an effective treatment for pompholyx. This provides evidence for Korean medicine use, and its possible effectiveness in treating pompholyx

• The Journal of Pediatrics of Korean Medicine
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• v.33 no.3
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• pp.1-14
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• 2019

Objectives The purpose of this study is to analyze clinical studies on effectiveness of herbal medicine in influenza compared with Oseltamivir. Methods We searched the randomized controlled trials (RCTs) with herbal medicine treatment on influenza compared to Oseltamivir from the Pubmed, CNKI, OASIS, NDSL, J-stage, and CiNii. Results 14 out of 717 studies were selected and analyzed. The herbal medicine treatment had a significant effects on the alleviation of fever, cough, sore throat than the Oseltamivir control treatment. Herbal medicine had same therapeutic effectiveness like Oseltamivir on duration of influenza-like symptoms and viral shedding. No serious adverse reactions were reported from the herbal medicine treatment. Conclusions The results of these trials showed that the herbal medicine may be more effective than the Oseltamivir in the treatment of influenza. Well-designed RCTs for domestic herbal medicine treatment on influenza are needed to prove its efficacy clearly.

• The Journal of Pediatrics of Korean Medicine
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.52-60
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• 2016

Objectives The purpose of this study is to analyze studies about the effects of topical application of Chinese herbal medicine for allergic rhinitis within randomized controlled trials (RCT). Methods The search database includes KJTK (Korean Traditional Knowledge Portal), OASIS (Oriental Medicine Advanced Searching Integrated system), CNKI (China National Knowledge Infrastructure), PubMed, and EMBASE. We used the following key search terms: "allergic rhinitis", "traditional Chinese medicine", "traditional Korean medicine", "Chinese herbal medicine", "randomized controlled trial", "clinical study", "nasal spray", and "nasal drop" Results Five studies were selected for analysis. Three studies used nasal spray of Chinese herbal medicine and two studies used nasal drops of Chinese herbal medicine for the intervention. Frequently used herbs were Magnoliae Flos (辛夷), Scutellariae Radix (黃芩), Coptidis Rhizoma (黃連), and Astragali Radix (黃芪). For the outcome measures, studies used symptom score, questionnaire of Quality of Life, nasal airway resistance, or laboratory studies. From all 5 studies, it has been shown that topical application of Chinese herbal medicine was effective for improving symptoms of allergic rhinitis. Two out of five studies showed statistical difference between study group and control group. Conclusions This study shows that topical application of Chinese herbal medicine can improve symptoms of allergic rhinitis. Well-designed RCT studies with low risk of bias and studies with outcome measures for assessing the immunomodulatory effects are necessary to confirm these findings.

• Journal of Oriental Neuropsychiatry
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.79-89
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• 2009

Objectives : To address suitable method for designing clinical trial intervening Traditional Korean Herbal Medicine on General anxiety disorder through the recent clinical research in Chinese Herbal Medicine. Methods : Randomized, controlled trials(RCTs) of treatment of general anxiety disorder intervening herbal medicine were searched through CNKI databases. We examined several item of studies and evaluated using Jadad scale. We searched articles in CNKI with the key word "General anxiety disorder or 廣範性焦慮症", among them we selected the clinical trial studies related with herbal medicine except for case reports, studies of acupuncture therapy or west medicines. Results : 11 RCT studies of herbal medicine met inclusion criteria. The Studies used CCMD-3, HAMA as inclusion tool and mainly HAMA as a evaluation tool. Studies were progressed for 2-8 weeks, mostly used various positive control. Experiment medicine were mainly 理氣劑, 安神劑. In most studies, experiment group made similar or higher efficacy in comparison with control group. Mean Jadad score of studies was $1.3{\pm}0.67$, and only one study was double-blinded among 11 studies. Conclusions : RCT studies on general anxiety disorder of chinese herbal medicine tend to focus on investigating effect of herbal medicine through setting positive control group with CCMD-3 and HAMA. But, most studies had low quality of trial, for lack of pattern identification, evaluation and inclusion tool of chinese medicine. Clinical trials of general anxiety disorder should provide good quality by randomization, double-blinding, and multi-site trial.

• The Journal of Korean Medicine Ophthalmology and Otolaryngology and Dermatology
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.114-125
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• 2020

Objectives : The aim of this study is to review the topical anesthetic effect of herbal medicine. Methods : Using domestic database(OASIS, RISS) and foreign database(Pubmed, Embase, Cochrane library, CNKI), clinical studies about efficacy of herbal medicine as topical anesthetics were searched. Only randomized controlled trials(RCT) were selected and analyzed. Results : Total 647 studies were searched. After screening process, 5 articles were selected. 2 were from Chinese database and 3 were from English database. Articles were about clinical use of herbal medicine as topical anesthetics and compare their efficacy with conventional topical anesthetics. Out of 5 articles, 4 articles used pain rating scales recorded by subjects as outcome measurement. All studies showed lower pain score in herbal medicine using groups. 4 studies showed that there was no statistically significant difference in pain score between herbal medicine using group and conventional topical anesthetics using group. Conclusions : The results suggest that topical anesthetics using herbal medicine is as effective as or maybe even more effective than conventional topical anesthetics. However, experimental design and composition of intervention were all different, which provides inaccuracy when comparing the experimental results. Also, sample sizes were small and the number of RCTs were insufficient to identify full list of herbs that have potentials to be used topical anesthetics. Further studies need to be conducted to find out potentials of herbal medicine as topical anesthetics.

• Journal of Korean Medicine Rehabilitation
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.49-60
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• 2014

Objectives The purpose of this study is to research current trends of acupuncture treatment of lumbar herniated intervertebral disc using the PubMed database. Methods We set up the search strategy and investigated clinical trials on acupuncture treatment of lumbar herniated intervertebral disc through PubMed search. This study analyzed previous researched papers published from January 1st, 2000 to April 30th, 2014, and classified them by publication year, journal names, types of literature, treatment methods and evaluation scales. To assess the quality of the reviewed literature, randomized controlled trial (RCT) studies were assessed by Cochrane's risk of bias (ROB) tool and non-RCT studies were assessed by risk of bias for non-randomized studies (RoBANS). Results We found 35 studies on the acupuncture treatment of lumbar herniated intervertebral disc. Papers on this topic have been published, on average, three to four times annually in 9 journals since the mid-2000's. The journal with the largest number of publications was Chinese Acupuncture & Moxibustion, and most of articles were classified as RCT. Acupuncture treatment was performed individually or together with other treatments. The most frequently used pain evaluation index was visual analogue scale (VAS). The index of effective rate was used frequently but there was a lack of objectivity. In regards to the quality of the studies, outcome assessment in RCT showed that random sequence generation, allocation concealment, and the blinding of participants and personnel increase potential of risk of bias. For non-RCT assessment, outcome showed that confounding variable, measurement of intervention were at high risk of bias. Conclusions In order to obtain objective clinical evidence of acupuncture treatment of lumbar herniated intervertebral disc, further clinical studies should be designed to minimize the risk of bias, using STRICTA with larger sample sizes.

• Journal of dental hygiene science
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.269-275
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• 2014

Recently, there are lots methodologies to improve the quality of research in medical and public health fields. One of them is to checking a process of research with a reporting guideline before reporting paper. Especially, reporting guideline for randomized controlled trials (RCTs) is the consolidated standards of reporting trials (CONSORT). Therefore, this review describes the latest version of the CONSORT statement, CONSORT 2010, including intent, background, and contents of this. The CONSORT statement comprises a checklist of essential items that should be included in reports of RCTs and a diagram for documenting the flow of participants through a trial. This report guideline aims at providing guidance to authors about how to improve the reporting of their trials. As consulting the CONSORT, authors could be strictly reported about research methods and results. From this review, we expect to elevate the quality of such research about dental hygiene and to establish the foundation for evidence-based dental hygiene.

• Journal of Korean Medicine Rehabilitation
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.55-66
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• 2018

Objectives To evaluate the evidence supporting the effectiveness of bee venom acupuncture for ankle sprain. Methods We conducted search across 11 electronic databases (Pubmed, EMBASE, Cochrane CENTRAL [CENTRAL], KoreaMed, Kmbase, Koreanstudies Information Service System [KISS], National Digital Science Library [NDSL], Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information [KISTI], China National Knowledge Infrastructure [CNKI], Wanfang and Chinese Scientific Journals Database [VIP] database) to find clinical trials that used bee venom acupuncture as treatment for ankle sprain. The methodological quality of randomized controlled clinical trials (RCTs) were assessed using the Cochrane Risk of Bias (RoB) tool, while non-randomized controlled clinical trials (NRCTs) were assessed using the Cochrane Risk of Bias Assessment tool for Non-randomized Study (RoBANS) tool. Results Four RCTs and one nRCT met our inclusion criteria. Almost studies showed that bee venom acupuncture has positive effect on ankle sprain. 4 studies of same intervention and control included in the meta-analysis. When comparing bee venom acupuncture and acupuncture with acupuncture, the effect size of standardized mean difference (SMD) was -0.19 (95% confidence interval [CI]: -1.95~1.56, Z=0.55, p=0.83). And when comparing bee venom acupuncture with acupuncture, the effect size of SMD was -0.17 (95% CI: -0.65~0.31, Z=0.71, p=0.48). Conclusions Although our systematic review found encouraging but limited evidence of bee venom acupuncture for ankle sprain, most of the studies included in the analysis were evaluated as methodologically high risk of bias. From now on further well-designed RCTs should be encouraged.

• Journal of Acupuncture Research
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.147-161
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• 2015

Objectives : The purpose of this study was to review the effectiveness of acupuncture and moxibustion therapy for the treatment of acute herpes zoster. Methods : Data was collected by two researchers. Clinical trials on PubMed were retrieved using MeSH terms including "herpes zoster" combined with "acupuncture therapy", "moxibustion", "bloodletting", "electroacupuncture", and related keywords. We excluded irrelevant studies and included randomized and non-randomized controlled trials, case series and case reports. Finally, we selected a total of thirteen studies and conducted a literature analysis and an object quality assessment. Results : Twelve of thirteen studies were about acupuncture and moxibustion combined therapy. Only one study suggested that a single acupuncture therapy is expected to be equally as effective as a common western medicine therapy. There was some evidence related to the effectiveness of moxibustion, venesection and electroacupuncture, but it dealt with combining therapy and was insufficient, and with an inclusion of potential risk factors. Only one study was conducted under approval from an institutional review board. No severe treatment-related adverse events were observed. A quality assessment suggested that there was some weakness in the areas of blinding and concealment. Conclusions : There is some evidence that suggests the effectiveness and safety of acupuncture and moxibustion combined therapy as a treatment for acute herpes zoster.