Randomized controlled trials of traditional, complementary, and integrative medicine-based interventions for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19): A bibliometric analysis and review of study designs

BACKGROUND: To date, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic remains ongoing and continues to affect millions of people worldwide. In the effort of fighting this pandemic, there has been an increasing interest in the potential of traditional, complementary, and integrative medicines (TCIMs) in engaging COVID-19. This study presents a bibliometric analysis of the research trends of TCIMs for COVID-19. METHODS: Six databases were searched on July 15, 2021, to retrieve all the citations on TCIM-focused randomized controlled trials (RCTs) available on COVID-19. Only RCTs that mentioned at least one TCIMs for the treatment and/or management or COVID-19 were eligible. Data such as number and countries of trials conducted, publication journal, research focus, study design, and sample size were extracted for analysis. RESULTS: The resulting 56 articles were authored by 553 unique authors, and included 28 English articles, 19 Chinese articles with English abstracts, and 9 Chinese articles without English abstract. Analyses had shown that China was the dominant country with TCIM related RCT publications, followed by India and the United States. The included articles were published across 24 English journals and 22 Chinese journals with a wide range of impact factors from 0.220 to 56.272. The most commonly studied TCIM modalities included Chinese herbal decoction (n=12) and Chinese patent medicine (n=16). In terms of study designs, TCIM interventions were integrated with standard medicine across the trials with most trials having a small to medium sample size and open-labeled. CONCLUSION: This bibliometric analysis of RCTs demonstrated the research trends and characteristics of TCIM utilized in COVID-19 research. Although there are still many research gaps and limitations for pandemic research, the publication of TCIM-focused RCTs is anticipated to show a continuously increasing trend.