Clinical application of traditional herbal medicine in five countries and regions: Japan; South Korea; Mainland China; Hong Kong, China; Taiwan, China

BackgroundStroke is a major cause of death and disability worldwide. Over the years, traditional medicines for stroke treatment have undergone tremendous progress, but few bibliometric studies have been performed. This study explored the trends and issues relating to the application of traditional medicine in stroke research.MethodsA bibliometric search was performed in the Web of Science Core Collection database to identify studies that investigated the application of traditional medicine in stroke management. CiteSpace VI and Excel 2016 were used to analyze information from the retrieved studies. Activity index and attractive index were used to explore the worldwide development modes.ResultsA total of 1083 English articles published between 2004 and 2018 were identified. Over the last 15 years, the developments in research occurred in three geographic clusters. The development modes were investigated and classified into 4 categories. In mainland China, the number and impact of research showed an increasing trend over the study period. The United States played a leading role in this topic. Three clusters of institutes and the majority of authors mainly came from South Korea, Taiwan and mainland China. Reperfusion injury and angiogenesis were identified as the potential topics likely to dominate future research in this field.ConclusionThe progress of studies on traditional medicine for stroke could be explained by the global attention to traditional medicine, the geospatial proximity for research collabration, and the increasing resources invested. Based on a large amount of existing research, researchers engaged in this topic should objectively consider the influential studies to identify and solve the common issues worldwide.

Traditional medicines (TMs) adjunctive to conventional medications are widely used for asthma in east-Asia and have gained popularity in western countries. To assess the efficacy and safety of TMs for asthma in children and adults based on placebo-controlled trials in order to inform physicians and assist them in discussions with patients. Seventeen electronic databases were searched. Participants had acute or chronic asthma. Interventions included orally administered traditional medicines used in east-Asia. Outcomes included lung function, symptoms, quality of life, exacerbations, medication use and safety. RevMan 5.3 (random effect model) was used for meta-analysis. Baseline values were assessed for balance and asthma severity. Within-group changes were calculated to assess minimal clinically important difference (MCID). Eighteen studies (2080 participants) were included. All combined TMs with conventional medicines. The single study of acute asthma (n=300) showed an improvement. For chronic asthma, severity at baseline ranged from very mild to severe. When asthma was mild, significant differences in lung function (FEV1%, PEF/R) were not detectable. When participants had moderate and/or severe asthma at baseline improvements were more evident. For measures of lung function, improvements within the TM groups tended to be greater when the asthma was more severe. Some studies showed MCIDs. No serious adverse events or interactions were reported but safety data were incomplete. The application of certain traditional herbal medicines used in east-Asia as adjuncts to conventional medications improved outcomes in acute and chronic asthma, but most evidence was based on single trials. Therefore, no single TM could be recommended. Effect sizes varied according to asthma severity at baseline. Future studies should consider baseline severity when enrolling participants.

Background: Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) offers a comprehensive approach to cancer treatment, often complementing conventional therapies. Persimmon or Diospyros kaki has long been used in Traditional Chinese Medicine for its potential antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects. Bioactive compounds found in this plant can be used for cancer treatment and therapy. Aim: The study aims to comprehensively review the pharmacological and anti-cancer properties of Diospyros kaki, emphasising its phytochemical composition, mechanism of action and its potential application in traditional medicine and modern oncology. Methods: Relevant literature published till 2024 was retrieved from various databases including Google Scholar, PubMed, SciSpace, ScienceDirect, IMMPAT 2.0 and PubChem. Keywords such as Diospyros kaki, anti-cancer, pharmacological activity, and phytochemicals were chosen for screening. Studies reporting pharmacological properties, particularly those exhibiting anti-cancer activity, were selected. Result: Diospyros kaki demonstrates significant pharmacological activity across multiple systems. Its fruit, leaves, roots, and calyx contain polyphenols, flavonoids, and triterpenes that exhibit antidiabetic, cardioprotective, neuroprotective, antimicrobial, and anti-inflammatory effects. From an anticancer perspective, compounds such as quercetin, kaempferol, diospyrin, and plumbagin contribute to apoptosis, oxidative stress modulation, and inhibition of tumour proliferation and angiogenesis. Therapeutically, its phytoconstituents support immune modulation, cellular redox balance, and enzyme inhibition, enhancing its potential as a supportive agent in chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Conclusion: The broad therapeutic profile of Diospyros kaki underlines its role in managing chronic diseases and cancer. Further research should focus on standardising extraction, improving bioavailability, and conducting clinical trials to translate these benefits into clinical use. Major Findings: Diospyros kaki exhibits potent anticancer and pharmacological activities, primarily through apoptosis induction, ROS modulation, and inflammation suppression, validating its traditional medicinal use and modern therapeutic relevance.

Toxic medicine used in Traditional Chinese Medicine for cancer treatment: are ion channels involved?

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA), an autoimmune disease of unknown etiology, is a serious threat to the health of middle-aged and elderly people. Although western medicine, traditional medicine such as traditional Chinese medicine, Tibetan medicine and other ethnic medicine have shown certain advantages in the diagnosis and treatment of RA, there are still some practical shortcomings, such as delayed diagnosis, improper treatment scheme and unclear drug mechanism. At present, the applications of artificial intelligence (AI)-based deep learning and cloud computing has aroused wide attention in the medical and health field, especially in screening potential active ingredients, targets and action pathways of single drugs or prescriptions in traditional medicine and optimizing disease diagnosis and treatment models. Integrated information and analysis of RA patients based on AI and medical big data will unquestionably benefit more RA patients worldwide. In this review, we mainly elaborated the application status and prospect of AI-assisted deep learning and cloud computation-oriented western medicine and traditional medicine on the diagnosis and treatment of RA in different stages. It can be predicted that with the help of AI, more pharmacological mechanisms of effective ethnic drugs against RA will be elucidated and more accurate solutions will be provided for the treatment and diagnosis of RA in the future.

A systematic literature review and classification of knowledge discovery in traditional medicine

The group of natural organic compounds referred to as humic substances are increasingly attracting attention both in Russia and globally. These compounds exhibit a fairly extensive range of biological properties, thus finding successful application in animal husbandry, agriculture and veterinary medicine. Fulvic acid represents one of the most prominent representatives of this group of substances. The chemical and biological properties of fulvic acid make it a promising candidate for application in traditional medicine and as a basis for the development of modern pharmacological preparations.

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and integrative medicine are key components of the cultural heritage from Eastern Asia with thousands-of-years history in research and healthcare delivery. Traditional oriental medicine contributes significantly to the prosperity of Chinese and Eastern Asian culture. After the introduction of western biomedicine to Asia, traditional medicine still plays an important role in the healthcare system of many Asian countries and integrated with the mainstream medical treatments as a new track of healthcare named as integrative medicine. With the current trend of globalization, traditional medicine and integrative medicine are receiving gradual acceptance in the Western world. As a result, studies on traditional medicine attract more and more attention from researchers with various knowledge backgrounds and technologies. Medical informatics is a new interdisciplinary branch in medical science when computer science and information technology are combined with research of health science. The application of medical informatics that has extended to the studies of traditional medicine and other therapies of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). The special issue supported by this journal provides a forum for traditional and integrative medical researchers and practitioners to share and exchange their new ideas on using computer science and information technology to explore and solve problems in healthcare. It is proposed with the Fifth International Workshop on Information Technology for Chinese Medicine (ITCM 2014) in Guangzhou, China, on 12 to 14 December 2014. The workshop is in conjunction with the 2014 IEEE International Conference on Bioinformatics and Biomedicine (BIBM'14), which was held in Belfast, UK, on 2 to 5 November 2014. Professor Xusheng Liu, Professor Honglai Zhang, and Professor Guozheng Li cochaired the workshop. The conference invited top experts from the US, UK, Australia, and Hong Kong to present their inspiring research outcomes and prospect the future of traditional and integrative medicine. However, numerous scientists and researchers were unable to introduce their excellent idea due to time limit of the workshop. The ITCM 2014 received about 100 submissions. All papers were anonymously reviewed by members of the IEEE conference organization committee. The accepted papers were published in the Proceedings of the 2014 IEEE International Conference on Bioinformatics and Biomedicine Workshops (IEEE-BIBMW) (ISBN 978-1-4799-1309-1). Just a few excellent papers were later invited to submit the extension version to the special issue alongside external submissions for consideration of publishing. This special issue has received 37 submissions. All papers have gone through rigorous view, and only 10 of them (27%) are finally accepted for publication. This special issue reflects the up-to-date progress in applications of information technology to traditional and integrative medicine. The papers are categorized to represent the four aspects of medical informatics research of the discipline. In the paper entitled “Standardization of Syndrome Differentiation Defined by Traditional Chinese Medicine in Operative Breast Cancer: A Modified Delphi Study,” Q. Guo and Q. Chen present their research on TCM syndromes. Five papers are selected to demonstrate the research progress in disease diagnosis and treatment. G.-X. Shi et al. report a clinical study on vascular dementia. Z. Chen presents a new mathematics method to explore the classical theory of five elements in TCM in his work “Researches on Mathematical Relationship of Five Elements of Containing Notes and Fibonacci Sequence Modulo 5.” In “Syndrome Differentiation Analysis on MARS500 Data of Traditional Chinese Medicine,” Y.-Z. Li et al. succeed to use MARS500 to process the data of traditional medicine. The paper entitled “Detecting Disease in Radiographs with Intuitive Confidence” by S. Jaeger introduces the new idea to use informatics method to detect disease. Three papers are about information processing of traditional medicine. The paper entitled “Patterns Exploration on Patterns of Empirical Herbal Formula of Chinese Medicine by Association Rules” by L. Huang et al. used association rules to retrieve patterns from classical traditional medical formula. B. Zhang et al. proposed a bioinformatics approach to explore the latent patterns from conventional formula Shuang-Huang-Lian in their work “Using Bioinformatics Approach to Explore the Pharmacological Mechanisms of Multiple Ingredients in Shuang-Huang-Lian.” The paper entitled “Pulse-Diagnosis Signals Analysis of Fatty Liver Disease and Cirrhosis Patients by Using Machine Learning” by N. Wang et al. introduces new data mining method to process diagnostic data of liver disease. Finally, the paper entitled “An Ensemble Learning Based Framework for Traditional Chinese Medicine Data Analysis with ICD-10 Labels” by G. Zhang et al. and the paper entitled “ISMAC: An Intelligent System for Customized Clinical Case Management and Analysis” introduce the applications of machine learning to electronic data analysis of traditional medicine.

Objective To Analyze the development tendency and major influential factors of the resource and service of traditional medicine (TM) by contrasting the statistical data between China and India.Methods The research data came from the governmental statistical date of traditional medicine.The main statistical indicators included:number of TM hospitals,number of beds in TM institutions,number of health personnel of TM,number of visits and inpatients of TM institutions.A contrastive analysis was given based on these data over the period of 2008-2012.Results In 2012,the number of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) hospital per ten million populations was 25.1,the number of Traditional Indian Medicine (TIM) hospital per ten million populations was 25.9; the number of beds in TCM institutions per ten thousand populations was 4.5,the number of beds in TIM institutions per ten thousand populations was 0.5; the number of TCM physicians and physician assistants per ten thousand populations was 2.6,the number of TIM physicians and physician assistants per ten thousand populations was 5.9.In 2012,the numbers of visits and inpatients of governmental public TCM hospitals were 426.671 million and 16.882 million; the numbers of visits and inpatients of governmental public TIM hospitals were 73.445 million and 0.947 million.Conclusion There was no significant difference in the number of TM hospitals per ten million populations between China and India.China had obviously advantages in the number of beds in TM institutions,number of visits and inpatients of TM institution.India had obviously advantages in the number of TM health personnel. Key words: Traditional Chinese medicine; Traditional Indian medicine; Medical resource and service

See related article, pages 1973–1979. The lack of effective and widely applicable pharmacological treatments for ischemic stroke patients may explain a growing interest in traditional medicines, for which extensive observational and anecdotal experience has accumulated over the past thousand years. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines traditional medicine as “health practices, approaches, knowledge and beliefs incorporating plant, animal and mineral based medicines, spiritual therapies, manual techniques and exercises, applied singularly or in combination to treat, diagnose and prevent illnesses or maintain well-being”.1 Unlike Western medicine, which focuses on disease, traditional medicine takes the approach that the body provides external clues to an internal imbalance that can be addressed by interventions such as herbs and acupuncture (holistic treatment approach).2 According to a 2003 WHO report,1 traditional medicine is very popular in all developing countries, and its use is rapidly increasing in industrialized countries. For example, traditional herbal preparations account for 30% to 50% of the total medicinal consumption in China. In Europe, North America and other industrialized regions, over 50% of the population have used traditional medicine at least once. The global market for herbal medicines currently stands at over US $60 billion annually and is growing steadily.1 In recent years, several reviews have been published on the effect and potential benefits of traditional Eastern medicine in stroke.3–7 It has been suggested that some herbal medicines, or their products, may improve microcirculation in the brain,4,8 protect against ischemic reperfusion injury,8,9 possess neuroprotective properties3,4 and inhibit apoptosis,10 thus justifying their use in ischemic stroke patients. However, unlike industrially manufactured pharmacological drugs used in Western medicine, the active (potent) components of herbal medicines often have not been specified and measured precisely, although there have been recent attempts to regulate dosages and use of …

An analysis of application of health informatics in Traditional Medicine: A review of four Traditional Medicine Systems

Introduction: Natural and Traditional Medicine incorporates procedures of different nature, oriented to the cure of ailments and diseases, which employ this treatment modality in medical emergencies in Primary Health Care. Objectives: to describe the application of Natural and Traditional Medicine in medical emergencies at the primary health care level. Methods: a review of 25 updated articles in journals in digital format was performed, in addition to normative documents, protocols for its implementation in primary health care. Results: among the main medical emergencies that are attended are hypertensive crises, acute bronchial asthma crises, nephritic colic, in reviewed articles refer that 85% of patients with hypertensive emergency resolved using acupuncture, the points Large Intestine 4 (Ig4), Liver 3 (H3), Governor Vessel 20 (VG20) were stimulated; other articles refer to the homeopathic combination of (Lycopodium 6 CH and Berberis 6 CH as satisfactory for pain relief in 153 patients (84.53%), electroacupuncture on acupuncture points V23 and VB 25, had analgesic power in 79.2% of the patients treated, the application of local heat (n=125) presented an efficacy in pain relief of 100%, 78.4% improved the asthma crisis using acupuncture on acupuncture points lung 7, vessel conception 17 and bladder 13, it was evidenced that the use of cupping, moxibustion, also improved these crises. Conclusions: the application of Natural and Traditional Medicine is effective to solve the main medical emergencies in Primary Health Care

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract also in English.中西醫結合包含中醫和西醫之間的團結合作，但更重要的是中醫學和西醫學之間的互相結合。在世界上對傳統醫學曾有過三種方針，即“否定”，“容忍”和“平行”的方針，均不能充分發揮傳統醫學的作用和潛力。中國採取“結合”的方針，較好地解決了這一問題，不僅滿足當前醫療工作的需要，更重要的是在科學研究中，強調創新，兩種醫學的觀點、方法、優勢互補，獲得大量新的研究成果，如針刺原理和針麻研究，青萬素的發現，瘀血證研究等。雖然現代醫學是主流醫學，但尚不足以解決所有問題，如慢性病，老年病等。用結合的思想可以更好地解決各種難題，使醫學科學更快地向前發展，造福於人民。What attitude should we take toward traditional medicine? There have been three types of policies in this regard all over the world. First, the excluding policy prohibits practicing any traditional medicine. Traditional physicians are not qualified to possess the title of physician, and their practice is illegal. Second, the tolerating policy does not make illegal traditional medical practice, but it does not formally affirm the practice. Third, the paralleling policy allows both traditional and modem medical practices, but their use may not overlap. For example, traditional physicians may not use modem medical facilities.Since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, a unique policy of integration has been adopted in China. This policy assumes that both traditional Chinese medicine and modern Western medicine have strengths and weaknesses. It requires that both types of medicine be integrated so as to develop more effective methods in treating diseases and preserving health.There are two senses of the integration of traditional Chinese and modern Western medicine. The first sense refers to the integration of the two types of the physicians, i.e., the cooperation between traditional Chinese practitioners and modern Western medical professionals. The second sense refers to the integration of the two disciplines; i.e., to use both traditional Chinese and modern Western medical theories and practices to create new forms of diagnostic and therapeutic approaches and means. The hope was to have the perspectives, methods, and solutions of both types of medicine complement each other.Under the integrating policy, traditional Chinese medicine has been developed tremendously in mainland China. 30 traditional Chinese medical colleges, 2457 traditional Chinese medical hospitals, and 170 traditional Chinese medical research institutions have been established. A number of well-known medical achievements, such as acupunctural analgesia and anesthesia, the discovery of a new type of anti-malaria drug - Qinghaosu (artemisinin), and the study of blood stasis syndrome, have been made by following the integrating strategy.With the rapid growth and development of the diagnostic and therapeutic technologies in modern Western medicine, some individuals are doubtful of the prospect of traditional Chinese medicine and of the necessity of China’s integrating strategy. However, no matter how advanced modern Western medicine as a form of medicine has become, it will not be able to handle all diseases or medical problems effectively and appropriately. The human body and medical reality are too complicated to be fixed by modern medicine once and for all. For instance, in the present time, chronic and geriatric diseases pose perplexing challenges to modern medicine. Possibilities are always open for traditional Chinese medicine as well as the integrated traditional Chinese and modern medicine to make their valuable contributions.DOWNLOAD HISTORY | This article has been downloaded 69 times in Digital Commons before migrating into this platform.

A comparative assessment of acute oral toxicity and traditional pharmacological activities between extracts of Fritillaria cirrhosae Bulbus and Fritillaria pallidiflora Bulbus

Integrated Database of Materia Medica (IDMM), a consolidated cross-cultural resource for data-driven research in traditional medicine.