A new study out today (link below) questions whether conducting clinical trials about complementary medicine is like testing whether magic works. While the study authors raise some useful points, their suggestion that complementary and alternative (CAM) treatments are being studied in clinical trials in an effort to improve patient satisfaction with medical care is “unsupported and even silly,” said Dr. Robyn Andersen, a researcher in the Fred Hutch Public Health Sciences division who studies the impact of CAM use on cancer screening and diagnosis. “Complementary and alternative medicine treatments are being studied -- where they are being studied at all -- because someone thinks there is reason to believe they might be effective and wants to test either a hypothesis about their effectiveness or a hypothesis about the potential mechanism by which a therapy is thought to work,” she said. Practices like homeopathy and Reiki are used relatively rarely and will never be explained by basic biochemistry, Andersen said. Other treatments, such as Vitamin D and herbs, are used by many Americans and have potential effects on health via biochemical mechanisms similar to those of pharmaceuticals. Many of these practices and substances need to be better understood, which argues in favor of continuing clinical trials. “Patients can help, too, by using their critical thinking skills to help them decide if some health practice seems plausible or if the claims of anyone attempting to sell a health service are ‘too good to be true,’” she said. “But in many cases there is no clear answer from common sense and the evidence we need to help patients and their doctors make informed choices will only come through research and clinical trials of CAM practices.”
Posted on: Thu, 21 Aug 2014 02:00:01 +0000
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