Abstract
Atopic dermatitis (AD) is a chronic pruritic inflammatory skin disease in which management with topical anti-inflammatory agents during exacerbations remains the mainstay of treatment. With no cure in sight, a significant proportion of patients elect to incorporate complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) as an adjunct to conventional treatment. Many clinicians find it difficult to provide recommendations as the field covers an extensive number of very disparate therapies, with limited quality evidence to indicate efficacy. Since publication of the last review on this topic in the Journal that compiled and analyzed randomized controlled trials (RCTs) on CAMs in 2015, several new studies have surfaced. This update aims to aggregate and review these new data. A literature search was conducted in the PubMed, EMBASE, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, and Global Resource for EczemA Trials (GREAT) databases for RCTs on complementary and alternative therapies in AD from March 2015 through May 2018, resulting in 15 studies being included in this review. The preliminary results for many treatments such as vitamin E, East Indian Sandalwood Oil (EISO), melatonin, l-histidine, and Manuka honey show positive clinical effects, but there is currently not enough evidence to recommend their use in AD therapy. Future investigative efforts should focus on reproducing some of these studies with a larger sample size whose clinical characteristics and demographics are more reflective of the general AD population, and standardizing the process to produce reliable data.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 251-266 |
| Number of pages | 16 |
| Journal | American Journal of Clinical Dermatology |
| Volume | 20 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Apr 1 2019 |
Funding
improvement obscures the reliability of the results. Moreover, baseline characteristics of the cohort were not reported, limiting interpretation of the results. Without demographic data, it is unclear whether the results were skewed by unequal distribution of age, sex, initial disease severity, and other features. Furthermore, without understanding the makeup of the cohort, the results cannot be reliably applied to the general AD patient population. No loss to follow-up or adverse events were reported in the study [18], which was funded by the Higher Education Commission.
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Dermatology