Teschke R, Wolff A, Frenzel C, Eickhoff A, Schulze J. Herbal traditional Chinese medicine and its evidence base in gastrointestinal disorders. World J Gastroenterol 2015; 21(15): 4466-4490 [PMID: 25914456 DOI: 10.3748/wjg.v21.i15.4466]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Rolf Teschke, MD, Professor, Department of Internal Medicine II, Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Klinikum Hanau, Teaching Hospital of the Medical Faculty of the Goethe University Frankfurt/Main, Leimenstrasse 20, D-63450 Hanau, Germany. rolf.teschke@gmx.de
Research Domain of This Article
Gastroenterology & Hepatology
Article-Type of This Article
Review
Open-Access Policy of This Article
This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
World J Gastroenterol. Apr 21, 2015; 21(15): 4466-4490 Published online Apr 21, 2015. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v21.i15.4466
Herbal traditional Chinese medicine and its evidence base in gastrointestinal disorders
Rolf Teschke, Albrecht Wolff, Christian Frenzel, Axel Eickhoff, Johannes Schulze
Rolf Teschke, Axel Eickhoff, Department of Internal Medicine II, Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Klinikum Hanau, Teaching Hospital of the Medical Faculty of the Goethe University Frankfurt/Main, D-63450 Hanau, Germany
Albrecht Wolff, Department of Internal Medicine II, Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Infectious Diseases, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, D-07747 Jena, Germany
Christian Frenzel, Department of Medicine I, University Medical Center Hamburg Eppendorf, D-20246 Hamburg, Germany
Johannes Schulze, Institute of Industrial, Environmental and Social Medicine, Medical Faculty of the Goethe University Frankfurt/Main, D-60591 Frankfurt/Main, Germany
Author contributions: Teschke R had the idea for this work; Wolff A, Frenzel C and Eickhoff A designed the report and performed the literature search; Eickhoff A and Schulze J analyzed the publications; Schulze J provided the tables; Teschke R and Schulze J wrote the paper.
Conflict-of-interest: None of the authors has a conflict of interest in relation to the preparation of this work.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Rolf Teschke, MD, Professor, Department of Internal Medicine II, Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Klinikum Hanau, Teaching Hospital of the Medical Faculty of the Goethe University Frankfurt/Main, Leimenstrasse 20, D-63450 Hanau, Germany. rolf.teschke@gmx.de
Telephone: +49-61-8121859
Received: November 22, 2014 Peer-review started: November 23, 2014 First decision: January 8, 2015 Revised: January 22, 2015 Accepted: February 11, 2015 Article in press: February 11, 2015 Published online: April 21, 2015
Core Tip
Core tip: This review focuses on evidence based trials of herbal traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) in managing gastrointestinal disorders and presents a practical reference guide on its role for treating these diseases. Overall quality of placebo controlled, randomized, controlled, double-blind clinical trials was poor; mostly neglecting stringent evidence based diagnostic and therapeutic criteria. Accordingly, appropriate Cochrane reviews and meta-analyses were limited and failed to support valid, clinically relevant evidence based efficiency of herbal TCM in most gastrointestinal diseases, including gastroesophageal reflux disease, gastric or duodenal ulcer, dyspepsia, irritable bowel syndrome, ulcerative colitis, and Crohn’s disease. Despite its interesting philosophical background with a long history, the general use of herbal TCM to treat various gastrointestinal diseases cannot be recommended due to lacking evidence based efficiency and a negative risk/benefit profile. Thus, substantial skepticism remains, proposing future studies with focus on well performed placebo controlled, randomized, double-blind clinical trials. Herbal product quality and standard criteria for diagnosis, treatment, and outcome should also be considered.
