The Efficacy of Chinese Medicine for SARS: A Review of Chinese Publications After the Crisis

Abstract

During the SARS crisis in China, 40-60% infected patients, at some stages of their treatment, received Chinese medicine treatment on top of the standard modern medicine treatment. This practice was endorsed and encouraged by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and some details of the herbal treatment were recommended. A review of the publications during and after the SARS crisis enabled us to get an objective view of the true value of the adjuvant therapy using Chinese medicinal herbs. Of the 130 articles searched, 90 were of reasonable quality and contained sufficient information for the enlightenment of the situation. These were reviewed. The results revealed positive but inconclusive indications about the efficacy of the combined treatments using Chinese medicine as an adjuvant. Positive effects using adjuvant herbal therapy included better control of fever, quicker clearance of chest infection, lesser consumption of steroids and other symptoms relief. In a few reports, some evidences of immunological boosterings were also found. More caution is required on the allegation about the efficacy of herbal medicine for the treatment or prevention of viral infection affecting the respiratory tract, while more clinical studies are indicated.

COVID-19: An Update on the Epidemiological, Clinical, Preventive and Therapeutic Evidence and Guidelines of Integrative Chinese–Western Medicine for the Management of 2019 Novel Coronavirus Disease

“…Prevention CM was also used as a preventive measure among healthcare workers during SARS (World Health Organization, 2004;Leung, 2007). 1063 patients (295 physicians and allied health workers, 485 nurses and 283 supporting staffs) had better quality of life and mental health status with no SARS infection after administrating the preventive CM formulation (sangye, ju-hua, xing-ren, lian-qiao, bao-he, jie-geng, gan-cao, lu-gen, huang-qi, fang-feng, daqing-ye and huang-qin) for 2 weeks when compared to a comparable control group (n ¼ 36111) (Lau et al, 2005a,b;World Health Organization, 2004).…”

Nutraceuticals have potential for boosting the type 1 interferon response to RNA viruses including influenza and coronavirus

“…23,35 This effect might be pertinent to the significant 27% reduction in total mortality observed in elderly subjects who received high-dose zinc in the AREDS1 multicenter trial. 36 And it should be acknowledged that certain herbal preparations have shown potential for controlling or mitigating the symptoms of infections with influenza and other RNA viruses, for reasons that remain obscure 37 ; extracts of elderberry, in particular, have received considerable clinical evaluation, and have been found to be symptomatically beneficial in influenza and the common cold. 38 Given that elderberry is a very rich source of anthocyanins, there is reason to suspect that its impact on viruses might be mediated, at least in part, by ferulic acid, a prominent metabolite that appears in plasma following anthocyanin ingestion.…”

Potential Role of Ginseng in the Treatment of Colorectal Cancer

“…Botanicals have also been the major source of therapy in many traditional medical systems and have been used clinically for the treatment of a variety of diseases (Mashour et al, 1998;Xie et al, 2006;Wicks et al, 2007). Botanical ingredients in natural products contain bioactive constituents with medical benefits (Akerele, 1993;Leung, 2007;Zhou et al, 2007;Li and Zhang, 2008). Furthermore, botanicals have contributed significantly to cancer therapy, and it is likely that extracts and active constituents from herbal medicine will continue to play an important role in cancer therapeutics (Liu and Jiang, 2006;Ng et al, 2006a and b;Shieh et al, 2006;Ozaslan et al, 2007).…”