Strategy and approaches of pathological and pathophysiological research in integrated traditional Chinese and western medicine

Abstract

Pathology and pathophysiology are sciences studying the laws and mechanisms of the occurrence and development of diseases, linking up the preclinical and clinical medicine. Owing to the different perspectives and ways of thinking, the western medicine and the traditional Chinese medicine developed respectively their independent theoretical, diagnostic and therapeutic systems. Integrative medicine, combining the theories and treatments of both western medicine and traditional Chinese medicine, has become the developing trend of medicine along with the social development. For this reason, pathological and pathophysiological research in integrated traditional Chinese and western medicine is highly significant for revealing the internal relations between the clinical manifestation and the pathological changes, for expounding the causes, conditions, mechanisms and laws of the occurrence and development of diseases. In doing related research, we should combine the disease and the syndrome, combine the macro-level and the micro-level, combine the part and the whole. We should manage to systematize the clinical research, to establish animal models of the syndromes, and to integrate the animal models of syndromes with the clinical characteristics of diseases. We should apply the theories of traditional Chinese medicine to the pathological and pathophysiological research of modern medicine.