A Literature Study of Topical Application of Chinese Herbal Medicine for Allergic Rhinitis

Objectives The purpose of this study is to analyze studies about the effects of topical application of Chinese herbal medicine for allergic rhinitis within randomized controlled trials (RCT). Methods The search database includes KJTK (Korean Traditional Knowledge Portal), OASIS (Oriental Medicine Advanced Searching Integrated system), CNKI (China National Knowledge Infrastructure), PubMed, and EMBASE. We used the following key search terms: "allergic rhinitis", "traditional Chinese medicine", "traditional Korean medicine", "Chinese herbal medicine", "randomized controlled trial", "clinical study", "nasal spray", and "nasal drop" Results Five studies were selected for analysis. Three studies used nasal spray of Chinese herbal medicine and two studies used nasal drops of Chinese herbal medicine for the intervention. Frequently used herbs were Magnoliae Flos (辛夷), Scutellariae Radix (黃芩), Coptidis Rhizoma (黃連), and Astragali Radix (黃芪). For the outcome measures, studies used symptom score, questionnaire of Quality of Life, nasal airway resistance, or laboratory studies. From all 5 studies, it has been shown that topical application of Chinese herbal medicine was effective for improving symptoms of allergic rhinitis. Two out of five studies showed statistical difference between study group and control group. Conclusions This study shows that topical application of Chinese herbal medicine can improve symptoms of allergic rhinitis. Well-designed RCT studies with low risk of bias and studies with outcome measures for assessing the immunomodulatory effects are necessary to confirm these findings.