Traditional Medicine for Pain Management
1Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Chengdu, China
2Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA
3Peking University, Beijing, China
Traditional Medicine for Pain Management
Description
Pain management is a global challenge, due to the high prevalence of chronic or acute pain worldwide, large medical burden, and disabling effects. With the opioid crisis for pain management emerging in the US in 2017, various federal regulatory and oversight agencies, including the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), and the Joint Commission have started to advise or mandate that healthcare systems and providers offer other treatment options for pain control. Traditional medicines stand as the potential choices to fulfil these calls.
Traditional medicines are generally believed to be green and safe treatment choices for various conditions. Traditional medicines for pain management are defined as the sum total of the knowledge, skill, and practices based on the theories, beliefs, and experiences indigenous to different cultures, whether explicable or not, in the prevention, improvement, or treatment of pain. Among the various traditional medicines, acupuncture, traditional Chinese herbal medicine, yoga, and ayurveda medicine are the most prominent for pain management worldwide. However, most traditional medicines for pain management are not evidence-based and the underlying scientific mechanism remains not fully illustrated, which restricts their use for clinical practice.
Therefore, in this context, researchers are welcome to contribute original, as well as review articles, to this special issue that may improve our understanding about the potential use of traditional medicines for pain management. The aim of this special issue focuses on traditional medicine interventions, including but not limited to acupuncture, traditional Chinese herbal medicine, unani, ayurveda, yoga, tai chi, and qigong. We encourage the submission of papers from the view of different disciplines, such as molecular, neuroimaging, and randomized controlled clinic trails, to provide a comprehensive view in this field.
Potential topics include but are not limited to the following:
- Epidemiology and health economics research of traditional medicines for pain management
- Evidence-based clinical research of traditional medicines for pain management
- Systematic reviews of traditional medicines for pain management
- Novel insights into the genetic, cellular, molecular and neuroimaging mechanisms involved in pain modulation of traditional medicines
- Translational medical research of traditional medicines for pain management