The rationale behind the four major anti-COVID-19 principles of Chinese herbal medicine based on systems medicine

Abstract

As the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and its variants continue to rage into the second year of a global pandemic, many success stories of applying Chinese herbal medicine (CHM) to treat COVID-19 patients continue to emerge from China and other part of the world. Herewith, from a systems medicine perspective, the authors analyze those experiences and categorize them into four major treatment principles: (1) focusing on eliminating toxins in the early stage of the disease, (2) tonifying deficiency of the body throughout the entire disease course, (3) treating the affected lung and intestine simultaneously based on visceral interactions, (4) cooling blood and removing blood stasis at the later stage, as well as interpret the rationale of these principles. This is helpful not only in reducing the complexity of promoting the CHM applications to enhance anti-COVID-19 efficacy, but also in ramping out the process of integrating traditional Chinese medicine with modern medical practices.

Keywords

Anti-COVID-19 / Chinese herbal medicine / Systems medicine / Treatment principles / Rationale

Conflict of interest statement

The authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose or declare.

Funding

None.

Author contributions

The authors wish to thank Dr. Guanyuan Jin for the supervision, investigation, conceptualization, and writing of the original manuscript draft; Dr. Louis Lei Jin for the administration, investigation, conceptualization, revision, and editing of the manuscript; and Ms. Bonnie Xia Jin for the revision and proofreading of the manuscript.

Ethical approval of studies and informed consent

This article does not contain any research on human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

Acknowledgments

None.

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Acupuncture and Herbal Medicine