Complementary therapies for the treatment of HIV: in search of the evidence
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) is widespread. Yet, little is known about the evidence supporting its use in HIV/AIDS. We conducted a systematic review of randomized clinical trials assessing the effectiveness of complementary therapies for HIV and HIV-related symptoms. Comprehensive literature searches were performed of seven electronic databases. Data were abstracted independently by two reviewers. Thirty trials met our predefined inclusion/exclusion criteria: 18 trials were of stress management; five of Natural Health Products; four of massage/therapeutic touch; one of acupuncture; two of homeopathy. The trials were published between 1989 and 2003. Most trials were small and of limited methodological rigour. The results suggest that stress management may prove to be an effective way to increase the quality of life. For all other treatments, data are insufficient for demonstrating effectiveness. Despite the widespread use of CAM by people living with HIV/AIDS, the effectiveness of these therapies has not been established. Vis à vis CAM's popularity, the paucity of clinical trials and their low methodological quality are concerning.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.008 | 0.023 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.006 | 0.002 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.012 | 0.014 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".