Department of Pharmacy, Shaoxing Seventh People's Hospital, Shaoxing, Zhejiang, China.
Afr Health Sci. 2023 Jun;23(2):56-66. doi: 10.4314/ahs.v23i2.7.
Until June 2022, more than 540.9 million people had been diagnosed with COVID-19, and the pandemic had claimed more than six million lives worldwide. Two years after fighting the virus, we faced a more uncertain position. SARS-CoV-2 is constantly mutating and reappears regularly, particularly with Omicron variants showing high genetic variation and immune escape mechanisms. The efficacy and duration of protection of existing vaccines against new variants of SARS-CoV-2 remains uncertain. The world needs time to develop new variant-specific drugs, including monoclonal topics, vaccines, and other antiviral drugs, to fight the epidemic.
The aim of this study was to illustrate the scientific, effective and systematic nature of three classical prescriptions of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) for the treatment of COVID-19 through comparison of disease symptoms, diagnostic process, and treatment methods and evidence-based and pharmacological studies.
We analysed the "Diagnosis and Treatment Protocol for Novel Coronavirus Pneumonia" (Version 9) made by China, "WHO-2019-nCoV-therapeutics", "Therapeutic Guidelines" published by Australian Therapeutic Guidelines Limited, "Shanghan Lun (Treatise on Febrile Diseases)", "Jinkui Yaolue (Golden Chamber Synopsis), and "Wenyi Lun (The Epidemic Febrile Disease)". We manually retrieved the dictionary of traditional Chinese medicine (Version II). In addition, we searched the Wiley online library, National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), VIP, WHO website, and China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) for relevant literature from 2001 to 2022. We searched the original plants, ingredients, pharmacology, functions and indications, usage and dosage, drug efficacy, literature sources, and conduct an evidence-based studies. We quantified the strength of pharmacological action to show the pertinence of disease development.
We found that the diagnosis and treatment of pulmonary infection caused by epidemic disease in TCM classics is consistent with the diagnostic process of modern medical therapeutic guidelines. The three classic prescriptions have significant symptomatic therapeutic effects on the respiratory, gastrointestinal, urinary and hematological symptoms of the clinical manifestations of COVID-19. It was found that the herbal functional group of Houpo ), Chaihu (), Cangzhu (), Qianghuo (), etc showed strong anti-inflammatory activity and had a positive effect on treating and preventing the outbreaks of systemic inflammatory factors.
TCM can obtain obvious curative effect in symptomatic treatment, has strong anti-inflammatory effect, and can effectively reduce symptoms and patients' pain.
截至 2022 年 6 月，全球已有超过 5.409 亿人被诊断感染 COVID-19，该病毒已导致全球 600 多万人死亡。与病毒斗争两年后，我们面临着更加不确定的局面。SARS-CoV-2 不断变异并定期重现，尤其是奥密克戎变异株表现出较高的遗传变异性和免疫逃逸机制。现有疫苗对 SARS-CoV-2 新变异株的保护效果和持续时间尚不确定。世界需要时间开发针对新变异株的特异性药物，包括单克隆抗体、疫苗和其他抗病毒药物，以抗击疫情。
本研究旨在通过比较疾病症状、诊断过程、治疗方法以及基于证据和药理学研究，说明三种经典中药方剂治疗 COVID-19 的科学性、有效性和系统性。
我们分析了中国制定的《新型冠状病毒肺炎诊疗方案（试行第九版）》、世界卫生组织（WHO）的《2019-nCoV-therapeutics》、澳大利亚治疗指南有限公司发布的《治疗指南》、《伤寒论》、《金匮要略》和《瘟疫论》。我们手动检索了中药词典（第二版）。此外，我们还在 Wiley 在线图书馆、美国国家生物技术信息中心（NCBI）、维普、世界卫生组织（WHO）网站和中国知网（CNKI）上检索了 2001 年至 2022 年的相关文献。我们检索了原始植物、成分、药理学、功能和适应证、用法和剂量、药效、文献来源，并进行了基于证据的研究。我们对药理作用进行了量化，以显示疾病发展的针对性。
我们发现，中医经典中对疫病引起的肺部感染的诊断和治疗与现代医学治疗指南的诊断过程一致。三种经典方剂对 COVID-19 临床症状的呼吸、胃肠、泌尿和血液系统症状均有显著的对症治疗作用。发现厚朴、柴胡、苍术、羌活等草药功能群具有较强的抗炎活性，对治疗和预防全身炎症因子爆发有积极作用。
中医药在对症治疗方面能取得明显疗效，具有较强的抗炎作用，能有效减轻症状，减轻患者痛苦。
