GAP: From sound design to practical implementation in clinical trials for traditional chinese medicine

The past few years have witnessed encouraging progress in improving the methodological quality of clinical research of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). This improvement has contributed to wider academic acceptance of the findings of TCM clinical studies, which were previously deemed dubious. As a proof of this statement, one clinical study testing the effects of a Chinese patent drug Qili Qiangxin Capsules on chronic heart failure has just published a research article on the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, a medical journal of international prestige. However, a sound and scientific design does not always see to its practicality in the conduct of the study, and in fact we observed a widening gap between the two elements. In this special issue, we called for papers discussing efforts to bridge the gap between scientific design and practical implementation of clinical research with TCM.