Objective: To investigate the spectral changes of diseases with the treatment of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), and to find out the advantages of TCM.
Methods: A manual search for papers of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in 13 core journals of TCM and integrated Chinese and Western medicine (ICWM) published from 1999 to 2004 were performed to create a database of RCTs. Depending on the database, the diseases involved were classified systematically. Among them, the common diseases were analyzed, and the disease spectrum was compared with that gotten from the RCTs database founded from 1980 - 1998.
Results: Most of the total 7 422 articles on RCTs enclosed were concerning the diseases of digestive system (14.93%), cardiovascular system (11.33%), nervous system (10.01%), and respiratory system (8.68%), and mostly were studies on cerebrovascular accident, diabetes mellitus, coronary heart disease (CHD) and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, accounting for 5.01%, 4.86%, 3.17% and 2.57%, respectively. As compared with the previous materials, the constituent ratios of nervous system disease, endocrine metabolic disease, tumor, and gynopathy from 1999 to 2004 were raised (all P <0.05), while those of digestive and respiratory system diseases were lowered (both P < 0.05).
Conclusion: Researchers of TCM and ICWM pay more attention to the clinical studies about prevention and treatment with TCM on cerebro-/cardiovascular disease, endocrine metabolic disease and malignant tumor. TCM possesses advantages in treating chronic disease, preventing disease, emphasizing on wholism and is economic with fewer adverse reactions.