Chinese herbal medicine research in eczema treatment

Table 1 Randomized trials on herbal medicine for eczema

Population	Design	Outcome	Adverse effects	Validity	Remarks
Pediatric	Randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover	Clinical only	Nil	Not intention-to-treat due to dropouts, no quality of life measurement	Efficacy not concurred with [11]	[25]
Adults	Randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover	Clinical only	Nil	Not intention-to-treat due to dropouts, no quality of life measurement	Efficacy not concurred with [11]	[13, 49]
Pediatric + Adults	Randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover	Clinical only	Minor	Intention-to-treat, no dropouts, no quality of life measurement	No effects	[11]
Pediatric	Randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled	Clinical + quality of life + oral antihistamine and topical steroid-sparing	Minor	Intention-to-treat, no dropouts, quality of life + oral antihistamine and topical steroid usage sparing	Improved quality of life and steroid-sparing	[30]
Adults	Randomized to 4 groups, saline as control	Poorly defined total effective rate and cured rate	Nil	Apparently no dropouts, but very small subgroups sizes, no quality of life measurement	Effective, difficult to assess efficacy	[31]
Adults	Randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled	Clinical + topical steroid and tacrolimus-sparing	Minor	Not intention-to-treat due to dropouts, no quality of life measurement	Topical steroid and tacrolimus-sparing only	[32]