Chinese herbal prescriptions for osteoarthritis in Taiwan: analysis of national health insurance dataset

BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine

Research Article

Ching-Mao Chang¹  Fang-Pey Chen²  Yu-Chun Chen³  Fun-Jou Chen⁴  Shinn-Jang Hwang⁵ 

[1] Center for Traditional Medicine, Taipei Veterans General Hospital, 11217, Taipei, Taiwan;Center for Traditional Medicine, Taipei Veterans General Hospital, 11217, Taipei, Taiwan;School of Medicine, National Yang-Ming University, 11221, Taipei, Taiwan;Department of Research and Education, National Yang-Ming University Hospital, 26042, I-Lan, Taiwan;School of Chinese Medicine, China Medical University, 40402, Taichung, Taiwan;School of Medicine, National Yang-Ming University, 11221, Taipei, Taiwan;Department of Family Medicine, Taipei Veterans General Hospital, No. 201, Sec. 2, Shih-Pai Road, 11217, Taipei, Beitou District, Taiwan;

关键词: Association rule;    Chinese herbal medicine;    National health insurance;    Osteoarthritis;    Pharmaco-epidemiology;    Traditional Chinese medicine;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1472-6882-14-91

 received in 2013-11-26, accepted in 2014-02-24,  发布年份 2014

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundChinese herbal medicine (CHM) has been commonly used for treating osteoarthritis in Asia for centuries. This study aimed to conduct a large-scale pharmaco-epidemiologic study and evaluate the frequency and patterns of CHM used in treating osteoarthritis in Taiwan.MethodsA complete database (total 22,520,776 beneficiaries) of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) outpatient claims offered by the National Health Insurance program in Taiwan for the year 2002 was employed for this research. Patients with osteoarthritis were identified according to the diagnostic code of the International Classification of Disease among claimed visiting files. Corresponding prescription files were analyzed, and an association rule was applied to evaluate the co-prescription of CHM for treating osteoarthritis.ResultsThere were 20,059 subjects who visited TCM clinics for osteoarthritis and received a total of 32,050 CHM prescriptions. Subjects between 40 and 49 years of age comprised the largest number of those treated (19.2%), followed by 50-59 years (18.8%) and 60-69 years group (18.2%). In addition, female subjects used CHMs for osteoarthritis more frequently than male subjects (female: male = 1.89: l). There was an average of 5.2 items prescribed in the form of either an individual Chinese herb or formula in a single CHM prescription for osteoarthritis. Du-zhong (Eucommia bark) was the most commonly prescribed Chinese single herb, while Du-huo-ji-sheng-tang was the most commonly prescribed Chinese herbal formula for osteoarthritis. According to the association rule, the most commonly prescribed formula was Du-huo-ji-sheng-tang plus Shen-tong-zhu-yu-tang, and the most commonly prescribed triple-drug combination was Du-huo-ji-sheng-tang, Gu-sui-pu (Drynaria fortune (Kunze) J. Sm.), and Xu-Duan (Himalaya teasel). Nevertheless, further clinical trials are needed to evaluate the efficacy and safety of these CHMs for treating osteoarthritis.ConclusionsThis study conducted a large scale pharmaco-epidemiology survey of Chinese herbal medicine use in OA patients by analyzing the NHIRD in Taiwan in year 2002.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Chen et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2014. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.