What types of medical herbal therapy preparations are there?

At present, the medical herbal therapy preparations that have been formally approved in China can be divided according to the action scenario and route of administration. The most common categories are external patching, oral preparations, and mucosal administration. There are also niche dosage forms such as iontophoresis and medical fumigation, which are currently mostly used on a small scale within medical institutions.

I have been working in the Traditional Chinese Medicine Department of a grassroots hospital for 7 years, and what I usually come into contact with the most are external patches. Don’t think that they are all the health-care patches on the market that only cost a few yuan a patch. The serious medical-grade ones have to be reviewed from the content of medicinal materials to the safety of the base material. The most typical one is the well-known Sanfu The patches we use are all finished products approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The ratio of white mustard seeds and kansui is very strict, and even the adhesive backing is hypoallergenic. An old man suffering from chronic bronchitis used the patches for three consecutive years, and the number of hospitalizations for coughing and asthma in winter dropped directly from two or three times a year to once at most.

Oral medical herbal preparations are usually the most frequently prescribed in outpatient clinics. This is not the health-preserving herbal tea that everyone cooks at home. All ingredients, dosages, and adverse reactions must be supported by clear clinical data, such as Compound Isatis Granules and Lianhua Qingwen, which are often drunk by everyone when they have a cold. Granules fall into this category, and many hospitals have their own in-hospital preparations. For example, our hospital has been making lung-moistening ointment for more than ten years. The ratio of pear juice, Sichuan clam, and Ophiopogon japonicus is fixed. Every year, patients with autumn dry cough come to prescribe it, and the feedback is good. Last year, more than 400 bottles were sold in October alone.

In addition to stickers and edibles, there is also a type of mucosal drug delivery form that you may not pay much attention to at ordinary times. They all act directly on mucous membranes such as the oral cavity and nasal cavity, and are absorbed quickly and cause little irritation. For example, compound grass coral lozenges for treating oral ulcers, and allergic rhinoplasty tablets for relieving allergic rhinitis. Xanthium sesame oil nose drops for inflammation of the nose fall into this category. Previously, a sophomore in high school suffered from allergic rhinitis, and the nasal cavity always felt dry and painful when sprayed with corticosteroids. After using the medical-grade Xanthium sesame oil nose drops provided by our hospital for two weeks, the number of sneezes in the morning was reduced by more than half.

Of course, there is now a lot of controversy in the industry about the specifications of such preparations. Many practitioners with a Western medicine background feel that herbal preparations are mostly composed of compound ingredients, with unclear single effective content, and adverse reactions are difficult to track. Some researchers in the field of traditional Chinese medicine believe that herbal preparations are inherently multi-component and work synergistically, and cannot be rigidly applied to the single ingredient standards of chemical drugs. In the past two years, supervision has been gradually tightened. Now, new batches of medical herbal preparations are required to complete three phases of clinical trials before they can be launched on the market. Clear data on efficacy and adverse reaction rates are required.

There are also some relatively niche dosage forms, such as the iontophoretic herbal preparations commonly used in rehabilitation departments. The ingredients are delivered directly into the joint cavity through electrotherapy equipment, which is particularly effective in relieving pain for patients with knee arthritis. There is also the medical fumigation preparation introduced by our department last year. It is different from the ordinary herbal bags sold on the market. It has fewer impurities and a low allergenicity rate. It has been used to fumigate the lower back of mothers who suffered from postpartum wind, and the feedback has been very good. The entire category is still developing. Maybe in a few years, more convenient and effective new dosage forms will be released, and patients will have more choices.