Objective To know about the baseline and quality of clinical prophylaxis and treatment study on communicable diseases in China, by identifying and assessing the clinical studies published in Chinese Journal of Infectious Diseases for 18 years. Method Handsearching page by page to identify and register the clinical studies from the journal, the definition of randomized controlled trial (RCT) and controlled clinical trial (CCT) strictly according to the Cochrane Collaboration Handbook (1997). Results There were totally 214 clinical studies during the 18 years, including 67 RCTs, 67 CCTs and 80 Non-CCTs. The average sample size of the RCTs was 103.0±70.2 (range from 17 to 296). Counted by every 5 years period (3 years period from 1998 to 2000), the proportion of RCTs in clinical studies was increasing steadily. The proportion were 22.9% from 1983 to 1987 (11/48), 29.2% from 1988 to 1992 (14/48), 41.9% from 1993 to 1997 (26/62), 28.6% from 1998 to 2000 (16/56) respectively. The main diseases studied in 214 clinical studies include: virus hepatitis (65 studies), hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome (19 studies), typhoid fever (11 studies), bacterial infection (13 studies), bacillary dysentery (5 studies), epidemic encephalitis B (3 studies) and parasitosis (9 studies). Conclusion RCT study design should be applied as much as possible. The quality of clinical studies on communicable diseases in China remains to be improved. Multi-center and large-scale collaborative study is worthy to advocate.