A Potential Chinese Medicine Granule Suppressing ARDS of COVID-19: Keguan-1
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hinese Journal of Integrative Medicine
Available online at link.springer.com/journal/11655 Journal homepage: www.cjim.cn/zxyjhen/zxyjhen/ch/index.aspx E-mail: [email protected]
Commentary
A Potential Chinese Medicine Granule Suppressing ARDS of COVID-19: Keguan-1 ZHONG Nan-shan, YANG Zi-feng, JIANG Mei, and LIANG Jing-yi Recently, a well-designed, exploratory clinical trial on the management of patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) by a Chinese medicine (CM) Keguan-1 has been conducted by Dr. XIAO Xiao-he and his colleagues. (1) For the emergency of COVID-19 treatment, conventional new vaccine and new drug development is a money consuming and time demanding process. Consequently, it is a realistic choice to explore potential therapeutic drugs among repurposing drugs such as hydroxychloroquine and remdesivir. However, none of them lives up to the expectation for now. Under such circumstances, CM, with thousands years of medical practice including various forms of herbal medicine may be an alternative medicine approach in COVID-19 treatment. As a role model, Lianhua Qingwen Capsule (连花清瘟胶囊, LQC)—a Chinese patent medicine is proved to significantly inhibit the SARS-COV-2 replication, affects virus morphology and exerts anti-inflammatory activity in vitro .(2) In a further clinical trial, LQC showed effectiveness and safety for the treatment of COVID-19 on the basis of usual treatment especially improving the recovery rate significantly.(3) In despite of the fact that the pathogenesis of COVID-19 is not well revealed, it is clearly observed that progression to acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) is the key turning point for the prognosis of COVID-19 patients.(4) The death rate is closely related to ARDS and there is no approved drug for ARDS. (5) Surprisingly, this brand new CM formula Keguan-1 was found being potential to suppress the progression to ARDS clinically. In this randomized controlled trial (RCT), compared with the control arm, the testing arm with Keguan-1 therapy exhibited not only a significant reduction in the incidence of ARDS but also a remarkble improvement in time to fever resolution. The finding echoes with the fact that the philosophy of CM is characterized
as holistic with emphasis on the integrity of the human body and the close relationship between human and the natural environment. CM focuses more on health maintenance and emphasizes on enhancing the body's resistance to diseases rather than eliminating pathogens in the treatment of disease. (6) In face of the shortage of effective treatment, CM's unique views on life and diseases showed unprecedented advantages especially used in novel infectious disease. This study is one of the current clinical trials to investigate the effect of CM on COVID-19, which brings us some implications. For Western medicine, it typically requires RCTs that provide statistical evidence that a drug could be successfully listed although strict pharmaceutical and preclinical studies have been completed. CM is also facing the same circumsta
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