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Quelle: The American Journal of Medicine and Researchers
from the University of California, San Francisco; the San
Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center
Eine
erste randomisierte Doppelblindstudie belegt, dass eine in
China weit verbreitete und oft angewandte Mischung aus zehn
unterschiedlichen chinesischen Kräutern die ihr
zugeschriebene Wirkung nicht hat
Evaluating Chinese Herbal Medicines with
Placebo-Controlled
Studies
October 17, 2003
Do Chinese herbal medicines
improve general health, when evaluated in Western-style, placebo-controlled
trials? In a study published in the current issue of The American
Journal of Medicine, researchers from 3 institutions in the
United States and a Beijing, China hospital found little effect.Sales of herbal medicines, including traditional
Chinese herbs, are now estimated to be more than $4 billion
annually. Longevity Treasure (Enwei Pharmaceutical Company)
is a proprietary extract composed of 10 Chinese herbs believed
to increase longevity, quality of life, energy, memory, sexual
function, and qi, the Chinese concept of vital energy that
is important in general health.
Because the product is used widely in China,
Stephen Bent, MD, writes, We sought to determine whether regular
use of this product would lead to improved health in elderly
Chinese adults. He continues, We attempted to measure changes
in both a standard Western measure of quality of life (the
SF-12 scale) and an Eastern measure (the qi scale).
Researchers from the University of California,
San Francisco; the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical
Center; The Andrus Gerontology Center of the University of
Southern California; and the Peking Union Medical College
Hospital, enrolled 237 residents of Beijing, China in this
study. All patients were at least 60 years old and had reported
decreased energy, memory or sexual function. In a double-blind,
randomized study, patients took four tablets of a Chinese
herbal formula or a placebo, three times a day for 30 days.
Patients taking the herbs had a small, two-point
improvement in a questionnaire measure of mental health compared
to patients taking placebo, but no improvement in physical
performance, memory, sexual function, or qi.
As a comparison, patients recovering from depression
achieve an approximately ten-point improvement in the same
mental health scale. Dr. Bent notes that, when a study includes
so many different outcome measures, a small benefit in only
one of the outcomes may indicate a chance finding, rather
than a true benefit from the herbs.
However, the study does demonstrate that Chinese
herbs can be evaluated with high-quality randomized, placebo-controlled
trials, which can examine both Western and Eastern concepts
of health. Qi is an important concept of health that has been
present in Chinese culture for thousands of years, says Dr.
Bent. One of the key findings of this study is that, with
a collaboration of Chinese and American institutions, we can
begin to evaluate this important measure of health. Dr. Bent
believes that the health claims of Chinese herbal medicines,
even though they involve different types of benefits such
as improvements in qi, should be rigorously tested.
The fact that Chinese herbs have a long tradition
of use does not prove their safety and efficacy. These products
can and should be tested with the same techniques used to
evaluate drugs: if there are important beneficial effects
on qi or other health measures, we should be able to find
them.
The study is reported in A Randomized Controlled
Trial of a Chinese Herbal Remedy to Increase Energy, Memory,
Sexual Function, and Quality of Life in Elderly Adults in
Beijing, China
by Stephen Bent, MD, Ling Xu, MD, Li-Yung Lui,
MA, MS, Michael Nevitt, PhD, Edward Schneider, MD, Guoqing
Tian, PhD, Saishan Guo, MD, and Steven Cummings, MD, MPH.The
article appears in The American Journal of Medicine, Volume
115, Number 6,
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