Beneficial effect of complementary alternative medicine on lymphedema with rheumatoid arthritis.

Lymphedema of the limbs can be an added complication in a small number of rheumatoid arthritis cases, becoming a long-standing problem even when there is good control of inflammatory joint disease. In the present article, we describe a patient with RA who developed lymph-edema of the forearms successfully treated with TJ-48 (Juzentaihoto) as a complementary alternative medicine (CAM). This kind of edema does not seem to show any consistent relationship with the severity of arthritis in the literature surveyed. In contrast, lymphedema in this case improved in parallel with RA disease activity. We discuss the utility of CAM treatments and review the literature.