Positive Health Online

Abstract

WANG and COLLEAGUES,  (1)Key Laboratory of Ministry of Education, Department of Pharmacology, Heilongjiang University of Chinese Medicine, Harbin, China reviewed the literature with the goal to describe the progress of Chinese Material Medica (CMM) in the treatment of inflammatory diseases from different aspects, and provide the essential theoretical support and scientific evidence for the further development and utilization of CMM resources as a potential anti-inflammation drug.

Background

Though inflammatory response is beneficial to body damage repair, if it is out of control, it can produce adverse effects on the body. Although purely western anti-inflammatory drugs, orthodox medicines, can control inflammation occurrence and development, it is not enough. The clinical efficacy of anti-inflammation therapies is unsatisfactory, thus the search for new anti-inflammation continues. Chinese Material Medica (CMM) remains a promising source of new therapeutic agents. CMM and herbal formulae from Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), unorthodox medicines, play an important anti-inflammatory role in multi-targets, multi-levels, and multi-ways in treating inflammation diseases in a long history in China, based on their multi-active ingredient characteristics. Due to these reasons, recently, CMM has been commercialized as an anti-inflammation agent which has become increasingly popular in the world health drug markets. Major research contributions in ethno pharmacology have generated vast amount of data associated with CMM in anti-inflammation aspect. Therefore, a systematic introduction of CMM anti-inflammatory research progress is of great importance and necessity.

Methodology

This paper strives to describe the progress of CMM in the treatment of inflammatory diseases from different aspects, and provide the essential theoretical support and scientific evidence for the further development and utilization of CMM resources as a potential anti-inflammation drug through a variety of databases. A literature survey was performed via electronic search (SciFinder®, Pubmed®, Google Scholar and Web of Science) on papers and patents and by systematic research in ethnopharmacological literature at various university libraries.

Results

This review mainly introduced the current research on the anti-inflammatory active ingredient, anti-inflammatory effects of CMM, their mechanism, anti-inflammatory drug development of CMM, and toxicological information.

Conclusion

CMM is used clinically to treat inflammation symptoms in TCM, and its effect is mediated by multiple targets through multiple active ingredients. Although scholars around the world have made studies on the anti-inflammatory studies of CMM from different pathways and aspects and have made substantial progress, further studies are warranted to delineate the inflammation actions in more cogent models, establish the toxicological profiles and quality standards, assess the potentials of CMM in clinical applications, and make more convenient preparations easy to administrate for patients. Development of the clinically anti-inflammatory drugs are also warranted.

References

Wang Q(1), Kuang H, Su Y, Sun Y, Feng J, Guo R, Chan K. Naturally derived anti-inflammatory compounds from Chinese medicinal plants.  J Ethnopharmacol. 146(1):9-39. Mar 7 2013. doi: 10.1016/j.jep.2012.12.013. Epub Dec 26 2012.