Clinical efficacy, mechanisms of action, and adverse effects of complementary and alternative medicine therapies for asthma.

Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) therapies such as herbal therapy, acupuncture, yoga, homeopathy, chiropractic medicine, and massage therapy, continue to gain popularity as modalities for the treatment of asthma. In the Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Indian, and Western cultures, herbal therapies appear to be commonly used for allergies. Although well-controlled scientific studies have not been performed on many of the Asian herbal therapies and some basic studies have been performed on various herbal components (active ingredients), more needs to be done to assess the composite effects of many herbal remedies. An important part of the assessment of CAM modalities is the therapeutic-toxicologic safety profile (risk-benefit ratio), and further research evaluating the clinical efficacy and mechanism of action of various CAM interventions for asthma is greatly needed. This paper focuses on clinical and laboratory research regarding various CAM therapies that have been used in the treatment of asthma. The references cited are confined to literature originally published or translated into English.