Traditional Chinese medicine has been used to treat acne vulgaris for thousands of years in China, so it has certain advantages. At present, there are great differences in the application criteria of TCM to evaluate the efficacy of acne vulgaris, and the measurement tools and time points are not uniform, and there are potential deviations in screening reports.These problems directly lead to the problems of evidence-based Chinese medicine, which is difficult to compare with Western medicine on the level of equivalent outcome indicators.
Considering whatever intervention (https://www.comet-initiative.org/Studies/Details/1221), all the usual type of acne clinical trials are recommended COS, we hope that developed on the basis of the existing COS an additional module. It is used for specific groups (patients with acne vulgaris treated by Chinese medicine) and specific treatments (internal and external treatment of Chinese medicine, for example, oral administration of Chinese medicine decoction, acupuncture, moxibustion, cupping, etc.).We will take the overall COS of acne as the default core outcome, and we are looking for any other core outcome to study this particular intervention. Here's why:
1) Regardless of the intervention, the existing COS recommendations for acne vulgaris clinical trials may not adequately take into account the views of the Chinese population using TCM treatment and do not include the opinions of both TCM treated acne vulgaris patients and TCM practitioners.As a result, there is uncertainty about whether these groups hold different opinions.
2) TCM doctors divide acne into different types according to consultation, consultation, pulse examination and tongue examination. In terms of efficacy evaluation of acne vulgaris, TCM has unique efficacy indicators for evaluating acne vulgaris, and TCM may require specific results to reflect the effect.For example, when doctors evaluate the clinical effectiveness of traditional Chinese medicine in treating acne vulgaris, they will focus on the expression of the patient's tongue, pulse, complexion, meridians, changes in diet and sleep.
Ying He, is from Guizhou University of Traditional Chinese Medicine.
Disease Category: Skin
Disease Name: Acne
Age Range: 12 - 50
Sex: Either
Nature of Intervention: Traditional Chinese Medicine
- Clinical experts
- Conference participants
- Consumers (patients)
- Epidemiologists
- Ethicists
- Patient/ support group representatives
- Policy makers
- COS for clinical trials or clinical research
- COS for practice
- Consensus conference
- Delphi process
- Literature review
- Survey
- Systematic review
Through the collection and analysis of the literature related to the clinical observation of acne vulgaris, a set of preliminary results was obtained. Two rounds of Delphi surveys were conducted based on this list, and Likert scores on the importance of each outcome were obtained from various stakeholders. Eventually, the outcomes identified through the consensus meeting will be incorporated into the COS.