What are the medical herbal therapy preparations?

Currently, the medical herbal therapy preparations used in regular clinical scenarios in China are herbal medicinal preparations that have been approved by the State Food and Drug Administration and clearly labeled with indications, usage, dosage, and adverse reactions. They are completely different from homemade herbal remedies that have not been approved.

I have been practicing in a primary hospital for nearly 7 years. Among the commonly prescribed preparations, the most familiar one is Compound Ganmaoling Granules. Herbal ingredients such as Sancha Ku, Marigold Silver Pan, and Wild Chrysanthemum are combined with a small amount of antipyretic and analgesic ingredients. It is very gentle in relieving body aches, congestion, and runny nose caused by common colds. Many office workers who are afraid of Western medicine and are sleepy, and elderly people with weak stomachs are more willing to use this.

When encountering patients with Helicobacter pylori infection in the gastroenterology department, we sometimes add Jinghua Weikang capsules to the quadruple therapy. This is an extract of Schizonepeta japonica and Aphrodisiac. We have seen multi-center clinical trial data before and found that combined use can increase the eradication rate by about 6 percentage points, and can also alleviate the side effects of antibiotics such as bitter mouth and mild diarrhea.

Of course, the controversy over medical herbal preparations in the industry has not stopped. Many researchers who adhere to strict evidence-based thinking believe that many of these preparations have complex components, and many adverse reactions are marked as "unclear." In the past two years, we did receive cases of patients who took herbal preparations containing tripterygium wilfordii for a long time on their own, and ended up with cases of kidney function damage. When we prescribe this kind of medicine, we will repeatedly emphasize to patients that they must not increase the dosage on their own, let alone buy the so-called "herbal miracle medicine" from online Sanwu manufacturers.

The surgery department previously treated an old man who was bedridden with mild bedsores at the tail vertebrae. After two weeks of regular Western medicine dressings, little new growth occurred. Later, we added a compound cork solution lubricant, which is extracts of herbs such as Forsythia suspensa, Phellodendron cork, and honeysuckle. The wound began to scab in less than ten days. Now many surgical colleagues will include such herbal topical preparations in their options when dealing with mildly infected wounds and wounds that are difficult to heal after surgery.

Many researchers in the field of traditional Chinese medicine believe that herbal preparations do not have to be purified into a single active ingredient to be qualified. For example, artemisinin extracted from Artemisia annua is a single ingredient and is now a globally recognized anti-malarial drug. Compound herbal preparations that retain multiple components can just deal with multi-symptom chronic diseases such as diabetes and chronic pharyngitis. As long as they are produced in strict accordance with pharmacopoeia specifications and used according to the doctor's instructions, the safety and effectiveness are supported.

Anyway, our criteria for selecting such preparations for front-line clinical use are simple to say. First, they must have formal national drug approval documents, and second, they must have sufficient clinical data to support the efficacy. When administering medicine to patients, both safety and effectiveness must be taken into account.