Gut Microbiota: The Potential Key Target of TCM’s Therapeutic Effect of Treating Different Diseases Using the Same Method—UC and T2DM as Examples

Abstract

Traditional Chinese herbal medicine often exerts the therapeutic effect of “treating different diseases with the same method” in clinical practice; in other words, it is a kind of herbal medicine that can often treat two or even multiple diseases; however, the biological mechanism underlying its multi-path and multi-target pharmacological effects remains unclear. Growing evidence has demonstrated that gut microbiota dysbiosis plays a vital role in the occurrence and development of several diseases, and that the root cause of herbal medicine plays a therapeutic role in different diseases, a phenomenon potentially related to the improvement of the gut microbiota. We used local intestinal diseases, such as ulcerative colitis, and systemic diseases, such as type 2 diabetes, as examples; comprehensively searched databases, such as PubMed, Web of Science, and China National Knowledge Infrastructure; and summarized the related studies. The results indicate that multiple individual Chinese herbal medicines, such as Rhizoma coptidis (Huang Lian), Curcuma longa L (Jiang Huang), and Radix Scutellariae (Huang Qin), and Chinese medicinal compounds, such as Gegen Qinlian Decoction, Banxia Xiexin Decoction, and Shenling Baizhu Powder, potentially treat these two diseases by enriching the diversity of the gut microbiota, increasing beneficial bacteria and butyrate-producing bacteria, reducing pathogenic bacteria, improving the intestinal mucosal barrier, and inhibiting intestinal and systemic inflammation. In conclusion, this study found that a variety of traditional Chinese herbal medicines can simultaneously treat ulcerative colitis and type 2 diabetes, and the gut microbiota may be a significant target for herbal medicine as it exerts its therapeutic effect of “treating different diseases with the same method”.

Anti-Hyperglycemic Agents in the Adjuvant Treatment of Sepsis: Improving Intestinal Barrier Function

“…Interestingly, both berberine and curcumin are isolated from a natural plant, and their positive effects on the intestinal barrier can partly explain how some traditional Chinese medicine work without finding a specific bioactive factor in the circulation. 158 …”

Advances in the gut microbiome and mood disorders

“…In addition, gut-brain studies may benefit from also investigating the virome along with the microbiome [33]. A road worth pursuing may be the investigation of narrow-spectrum antibiotic substances made by plants and microorganisms and targeted microbiome modulation by peptides or phage therapy for the treatment of affective disorders [60 ▪ ,61 ▪ ].…”

Chinese Medicine Phenomics (Chinmedphenomics): Personalized, Precise and Promising

“…A doctor makes a summary of the essence based on the etiologies, the locus and properties of the disease, the pathogenesis, the patient constitution, the inborn endowment, and even the psychologic situation, giving a comprehensive and intrinsic judgment for the symptom and characteristics of diseases. The reasons for “treating the same disease with different therapies and treating the different diseases with the same therapies” are just explained by the syndrome differentiation and treatment (Zhang et al 2022 ), thus making syndrome differentiation the focus of TCM treatment.…”