Evaluation of the efficacy of a Chinese herbal medicine in the treatment of patients with osteoarthritis of the knee

Osteoarthritis (OA) is common but has no outright cure. Current therapeutic drugs mainly treat OA symptoms and often cause undesirable side effects. Chinese medicine (CM) is a popular alternative therapy for OA, however the majority of CM efficacy studies have been methodologically inadequate. CM has traditionally treated OA under the clinical descriptor of ‘Bi Syndrome’ (painful obstruction syndrome) which includes a range of musculoskeletal disorders. An emerging theory treats OA as a combination of two types of CM Syndromes: Bi Syndrome and Wei Syndrome (atrophy syndrome). There is a lack of objective evidence with respect to possible CM Syndromes of OA, the reliability of CM diagnosis and efficacy of CM treatment guided by this emerging theory