Table 1

Search Strategy

Databases Searched For all available years up to August 27, 2007

All EBM Reviews (Cochrane)

International Pharmaceutical Abstracts

Allied and Complementary Medicine

Journals@ovid Full Text

CINAHL (OVID)

MEDLINE

EMBASE

Ovid Helathstar

Search Terms

All items were searched individually in each database. The leucoderma and vitiligo were combined together using the OR boolean. The rest of the search group were combined together into a second group using the OR boolean. The first and second group were then combined using the AND boolean.

• Leucoderma

• Inorganic chemicals

• Vitiligo

• Inorganic compound

• Alternative therapies

• Medicinal plant

• Amino acid

• Micronutrient

• Ayurvedic

• Mineral

• Biological factors

• Natural health product

• Biological group

• Naturopathy

• Botany

• Nutrient

• Chinese herb

• Nutrition

• Complementary medicine

• Nutrition therapy

• Complementary therapies

• Phytotherapy

• Diet therapy

• Plant

• Dietary supplement

• Plant extract

• Drugs, chinese herbal

• Plant preparations

• Essential fatty acids

• Plants, medicinal

• Ethnobotany

• Traditional medicine

• Ethnopharmacology

• Vitamin

• Herb

Szczurko and Boon BMC Dermatology 2008 8:2   doi:10.1186/1471-5945-8-2