Treatment Effects of Integrated TCM and Western Medicine Treatment Scheme on COVID-19: A Single-armed Clinical Trial

'Risk-benefit' assessment for comprehensive safety evaluation of Chinese patent medicines containing four common toxic ingredients: an analysis of clinical risk factors

Background

Chinese patent medicines are specialty preparations in China that are produced using traditional prescriptions processed by modern pharmaceutical technology. They contain complex ingredients and much attention is paid to their clinical safety. Demonstrating the clinical safety of Chinese patent medicines containing toxic ingredients in modern pharmacological studies has become one of the urgent issues to be solved for the safe use of clinical medicines.

Objectives

The aim of this research is to evaluate the safety of Chinese patent medicines containing toxic ingredients by applying the risk-benefit assessment method. Additionally, a database of 'toxic ingredients-toxic Chinese herbal medicines-adverse reactions' will be established to explore the relationship between toxic ingredients and adverse reactions. This will lay the foundation for the rational clinical use of Chinese patent medicines containing toxic ingredients.

Methods

1) Establish a database of 'toxic Chinese herbal medicines-toxic ingredients-toxic Chinese patent medicines' to count the Chinese patent medicines containing toxic ingredients in the 2020 edition of Chinese Pharmacopoeia. 2) Filtered the clinical studies, extracted the drug-related ADEs, and analyzed the characteristics and correlations of these ADEs. 3) Finally, this section summarizes the causes of ADEs related to Chinese patent medicines containing toxic ingredients and extracts the main risk factors to provide a reference for further study.

Outcomes

1) There are four main types of Chinese patent medicines containing toxic ingredients. These include medicines with diester aconitine metabolites, mineral composition, Araceae metabolites, and hydrogen cyanide. 2) Digestive system, skin and its appendages, and allergic reactions were the main types of ADEs related to four types of Chinese patent medicines containing toxic ingredients. 3) There are four primary risk factors associated with the clinical use of Chinese patent medicines containing toxic ingredients: medicine, medication, individual and regulatory factors.

Emergency Protective Measures and Strategies of COVID-19: From Lifestyle to Traditional Chinese Medicine

This article reviews various aspects of COVID-19, including its current status, its side-effects, emergency protective measures and strategies from lifestyle to traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) for fighting against the SARS-CoV-2, and its major variants (Delta and Omicron), with the ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic, which include "Carassius auratus lifestyle" for high effective isolation, social and high-tech medical strategies, traditional Chinese herbs "Bark-Flower-Fruit-Grass-Leaf-Nucleolus(seed)-Root (BFFGLNR)", and the combination of Chinese and western medicine. As a choice, little is known whether the Chinese acupuncture is an effective method for confirming and suspecting COVID-19 patients, which include imported and asymptomatic cases. Definitely, acupuncture has been proven effective treatment for the recovery of COVID-19 cases. However, further animal experiments and clinical trials are required to confirm its effects and disclose underlying mechanisms. In conclusion, these emergency protective measures and strategies for COVID-19 will help to effectively combat the SARS-CoV-2 and its variants during the pandemic and post-COVID-19 era.

TCM2COVID: A resource of anti-COVID-19 traditional Chinese medicine with effects and mechanisms

In China, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has been widely used for coronavirus infectious disease 2019 (COVID-19) prevention, treatment, and recovery and has played a part in the battle against the disease. A variety of TCM treatments have been recommended for different stages of COVID-19. But, to the best of our knowledge, a comprehensive database for storing and organizing anti-COVID TCM treatments is still lacking. Herein, we developed TCM2COVID, a manually curated resource of anti-COVID TCM formulas, natural products (NPs), and herbs. The current version of TCM2COVID (1) documents over 280 TCM formulas (including over 300 herbs) with detailed clinical evidence and therapeutic mechanism information; (2) records over 80 NPs with detailed potential therapeutic mechanisms; and (3) launches a useful web server for querying, analyzing and visualizing documented formulas similar to those supplied by the user (formula similarity analysis). In summary, TCM2COVD provides a user-friendly and practical platform for documenting, querying, and browsing anti-COVID TCM treatments, and will help in the development and elucidation of the mechanisms of action of new anti-COVID TCM therapies to support the fight against the COVID-19 epidemic. TCM2COVID is freely available at http://zhangy-lab.cn/tcm2covid/.