Integrative Medicine and Prospective Research on CAM

Abstract

There is a link between integrative medicine (IM) and prospective research on complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). IM is the future direction of CAM and research is needed to support clinical practice. Meaning of IM, proposed models of IM, and existing research on IM will be presented. Prospective research on CAM will cover methodologies presenting randomised controlled trials, harms studies of CAM in kidney disease, and a gap of CAM research. Study design and outcome measures are current challenges in CAM/IM research. Several networks of CAM research worldwide are still working on them and have proposed possible alternative approaches, such as pragmatic clinical trials and cohort multiple randomised controlled trials. These approaches would solve some limitations of randomised controlled trials in CAM research.