Frontiers in Public Health (Jan 2022)

Acceptability of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Chinese People Based on 10-Year's Real World Study With Mutiple Big Data Mining

  • Yan Guo,
  • Tengjiao Wang,
  • Tengjiao Wang,
  • Wei Chen,
  • Wei Chen,
  • Ted J. Kaptchuk,
  • Xilian Li,
  • Xilian Li,
  • Xiang Gao,
  • Xiang Gao,
  • Jiahui Yao,
  • Xudong Tang,
  • Ziming Xu

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2021.811730
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 9

Abstract

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In the past decades, numerous clinical researches have been conducted to illuminate the effects of traditional Chinese medicine for better inheritance and promotion of it, which are mostly clinical trials designed from the doctor's point of view. This large-scale data mining study was conducted from real-world point of view in up to 10 years' big data sets of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) in China, including both medical visits to hospital and cyberspace and contemporaneous social survey data. Finally, some important and interesting findings appear: (1) More Criticisms vs. More Visits. The intensity of criticism increased by 2.33 times over the past 10 years, while the actual number of visits increased by 2.41 times. (2) The people of younger age, highly educated and from economically developed areas have become the primary population for utilizing TCM, which is contrary to common opinions on the characteristics of TCM users. The discovery of this phenomenon indicates that TCM deserves further study on how it treats illness and maintains health.

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