title: MEDLINE-based assessment of animal studies on Chinese herbal medicine.
abstract: ETHNO-PHARMACOLOGICAL RELEVANCE: The scientific proof and clinical validation of Chinese herbal medicine (CHM) require a rigorous approach that includes chemical standardization, biological assays, animal studies and clinical trials.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  To assess the experimental design of animal studies on the activity of CHM by selection and scrutinizing of a series of papers in some major disease areas.
  
  
  METHODS
  We have analyzed the English publications reported in MEDLINE (ISI web of knowledge).
  
  
  RESULTS
  Our data showed that (i) research of CHM during the last 10 years had been highly intensified and become more accessible worldwide through increased publications in English, although still most authors had Chinese names; (ii) English journals publishing animal research of CHM were comparable to those publishing animal studies of non-Chinese phytotherapy in terms of impact factor; and (iii) published data on authentication and quality control of CHM, as well as research design of animal studies were far from sufficient to meet the criteria needed to support their reproducibility and reliability.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The recent decade witnessed an increase in CHM research activities and CHM English publications. Based on common problems identified in publications on CHM animal studies, we have proposed a checklist that could help in preliminary selection of publications lacking the most common problems and thus would be useful for a quick search of reproducible CHM regimens that are likely to be effective in a given context. The second application of this checklist is to help avoid the most common problems when designing experiments.
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Fisiología, Facultad de Medicina, Universidad de Alcalá, Madrid, Spain.
authors.forename: Noelia
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Tejedor Garcia
authors.forename: Laura
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Garcia Bermejo
authors.forename: Ana Belen
authors.initials: AB
authors.lastname: Fernandez Martinez
authors.forename: Gemma
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Olmos Centenera
authors.forename: Rajendra
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Kumari
authors.forename: Qihe
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.forename: Xiaodong
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Cheng
authors.forename: Sue
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Watson
authors.forename: Francisco Javier
authors.initials: FJ
authors.lastname: de Lucio Cazaña
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D035843:Biomedical Research / Q000379:methods*; D004365:Drugs, Chinese Herbal; D029001:Herbal Medicine; D007802:Language; D016239:MEDLINE; D008516:Medicine, Chinese Traditional; D008517:Phytotherapy; D010946:Plants, Medicinal; D011643:Publishing; D011786:Quality Control; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012107:Research Design / Q000592:standards*
chemical_list: D004365:Drugs, Chinese Herbal