Complementary and Alternative Medicine Use by Canadian Patients With Inflammatory Bowel Disease: Results From A National Survey
Bibliographic record
Abstract
OBJECTIVE: Previous studies of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) use by patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) have relied on samples from specialty clinics. The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of use and perceived outcomes of CAM in a large, diverse IBD population. METHODS: A postal survey of the members of the Crohn's and Colitis Foundation of Canada gathered data on demographic, disease, and conventional IBD treatment characteristics, and on the use and perceived effects of CAM. Respondents were characterized as not using CAM, as past or present users of CAM for their IBD, or as present users of CAM for other reasons. Comparisons between groups were made with the chi(2) test. RESULTS: The final sample included 2847 IBD patients. Current or past use of CAM for IBD was reported by 1332 patients, of whom 666 continued their use of CAM. Use was lowest in the eastern provinces and highest in the west. Only 15% had used CAM before their IBD diagnosis. Herbal therapies were the most commonly used (41% of CAM users). Improvements in sense of well-being, IBD symptoms, and sense of control over the disease were the most commonly reported benefits. Only 16% of prior CAM users reported any adverse effect of CAM use. A complementary practitioner was consulted by 34%. During the previous year, 46% had spend more than $250 on CAM. CONCLUSIONS: Use of CAM by IBD patients is very common. Most of these patients attribute significant benefits to their CAM use. Few report significant adverse events.
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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 | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
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".