Traditional Chinese Medicine in Treatment of COVID-19 and Viral Disease: Efficacies and Clinical Evidence

Xue Ding; Lei-Lei Fan; Shi-Xi Zhang; Xiu-Xia Ma; Peng-Fei Meng; Liang-Ping Li; Ming-Yan Huang; Jia-Le Guo; Peng-Zhan Zhong; Li-Ran Xu

doi:10.2147/IJGM.S386375

Traditional Chinese Medicine in Treatment of COVID-19 and Viral Disease: Efficacies and Clinical Evidence

Int J Gen Med. 2022 Nov 28:15:8353-8363. doi: 10.2147/IJGM.S386375. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Xue Ding¹, Lei-Lei Fan², Shi-Xi Zhang³, Xiu-Xia Ma⁴, Peng-Fei Meng⁴, Liang-Ping Li⁵, Ming-Yan Huang⁵, Jia-Le Guo⁵, Peng-Zhan Zhong⁵, Li-Ran Xu⁵

Affiliations

¹ Department of Medical, The First Affiliated Hospital of Henan University of Chinese Medicine, Zhengzhou, People's Republic of China.
² Department of Cardiovascular, Yellow River Central Hospital, Zhengzhou, People's Republic of China.
³ Department of Infectious Disease, Shangqiu Municipal Hospital, Shangqiu, People's Republic of China.
⁴ Department of AIDS Clinical Research Center, Henan University of Chinese Medicine, Zhengzhou, People's Republic of China.
⁵ Department of the First Clinical Medical College, Henan University of Chinese Medicine, Zhengzhou, People's Republic of China.

Abstract

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) remains an uncontained, worldwide pandemic. While battling the disease in China, the Chinese government has actively promoted the use of traditional Chinese medicine, and many studies have been conducted to determine the efficacy of traditional Chinese medicine for treating COVID-19. The present review discusses the effectiveness and safety of traditional Chinese medicine in curing COVID-19 and provides clinical evidence from all confirmed cases in China. Applications of traditional Chinese medicine and specific recipes for treating other viral infections, such as those caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus and influenza A viruses (including H1N1), are also discussed. Studies have reported that traditional Chinese medicine treatment plays a significant role in improving clinical symptoms. Therefore, further investigation may be of high translational value in revealing novel targeted therapies for COVID-19.

Keywords: acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus; clinical evidence; coronavirus disease-2019; influenza A viruses; traditional Chinese medicine.

Publication types

Review

Grants and funding

This work was supported by Nation Natural Science Foundation of China (U1904153), Special subject of scientific research on Traditional Chinese Medicine in Henan Province (2019AZB006, 2019JDZX2096) and Special subject of scientific research of Traditional Chinese Medicine on COVID-19 in Henan Province (2022ZYFY02).