Department of Pharmacy, National University of Singapore, Singapore.
Drug Discov Today. 2009 Jun;14(11-12):579-88. doi: 10.1016/j.drudis.2009.03.012. Epub 2009 Apr 5.
Opinions about the therapeutic efficacy of medicinal herbs differ significantly. Some reported herbal efficacies at low doses of active ingredients suggest a need for investigating whether these are because of placebo or multi-ingredient synergistic effects. This review discusses the opinions, methods and outcomes of herbal synergism investigations and analyzes indications from 48 in vivo tests and 106 rigorous clinical trials. Analyses of ingredient-mediated interactions at molecular and pathway levels indicate multi-ingredient synergism in 27 of the 39 reported cases of herbal synergism with available ingredient information. Synergistic actions may be responsible for the therapeutic efficacy of a substantial number of herbal products and their mechanisms may be studied by analyzing ingredient-mediated molecular interactions and network regulation.
关于草药疗效的观点差异很大。一些报道称，低剂量的活性成分的草药疗效表明有必要调查这些是否是因为安慰剂还是多成分协同作用。这篇综述讨论了草药协同作用研究的观点、方法和结果，并分析了 48 项体内试验和 106 项严格临床试验的结果。对分子和途径水平的成分介导相互作用的分析表明，在有可用成分信息的 39 例报道的草药协同作用中，有 27 例存在多成分协同作用。协同作用可能是大量草药产品疗效的原因，通过分析成分介导的分子相互作用和网络调节，可以研究其作用机制。
