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. 2018 Feb 7:2018:5813767.
doi: 10.1155/2018/5813767. eCollection 2018.

Investigation into the Individualized Treatment of Traditional Chinese Medicine through a Series of N-of-1 Trials

Haiyin Huang  1 , Peilan Yang  1 , Jie Wang  1 , Yingen Wu  2 , Suna Zi  1 , Jie Tang  1 , Zhenwei Wang  1 , Ying Ma  1 , Yuqing Zhang  3   4
Affiliations

Investigation into the Individualized Treatment of Traditional Chinese Medicine through a Series of N-of-1 Trials

Haiyin Huang et al. Evid Based Complement Alternat Med. .

Abstract

Purpose: To compare the efficacy of individualized herbal decoction with standard decoction for patients with stable bronchiectasis through N-of-1 trials.

Methods: We conducted a single center N-of-1 trials in 17 patients with stable bronchiectasis. Each N-of-1 trial contains three cycles. Each cycle is divided into two 4-week intervention including individualized decoction and fixed decoction (control). The primary outcome was patient self-reported symptoms scores on a 1-7 point Likert scale. Secondary outcomes were 24-hour sputum volume and CAT scores.

Results: Among 14 completed trials, five showed that the individualized decoction was statistically better than the control decoction on symptom scores (P < 0.05) but was not clinically significant. The group data of all the trials showed that individualized decoction was superior to control decoction on symptom scores (2.13 ± 0.58 versus 2.30 ± 0.65, P = 0.002, mean difference and 95% CI: 0.18 (0.10, 0.25)), 24 h sputum volume (P = 0.009), and CAT scores (9.69 ± 4.89 versus 11.64 ± 5.59, P = 0.013, mean difference and 95% CI: 1.95 (1.04, 2.86)) but not clinically significant.

Conclusion: Optimizing the combined analysis of individual and group data and the improvement of statistical models may make contribution in establishing a method of evaluating clinical efficacy in line with the characteristics of traditional Chinese medicine individual diagnosis and treatment.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
The flow chart of the N-of-1 trials in the treatment of stable bronchiectasis by traditional Chinese medicine based on syndrome differentiation.
Figure 2
Figure 2
The flowchart of the whole process including recruitment, enrollment, and completion of the study.
Figure 3
Figure 3
The comparison of the mean symptom scores between the individualized decoction and control decoction in the first, second, and third pairs of a series (14 cases) of N-of-1 trials.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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