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eCAM Advance Access published online on May 29, 2007
eCAM, doi:10.1093/ecam/nem035
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© 2007 The Author(s).
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

An Evaluation of the Additive Effect of Natural Herbal Medicine on SARS or SARS-like Infectious Diseases in 2003: a Randomized, Double-blind, and Controlled Pilot Study

Chung-Hua Hsu1,2,3, Kung-Chang Hwang4, Chung-Liang Chao5, Steve G. N. Chang6, Mei-Shang Ho7, Jaung-Geng Lin8, Hen-Hong Chang9, Shung-Te Kao8, Yi-Ming Chen2 and Pesus Chou1,2

1Community Medicine Research Center National Yang-Ming University, 2Institute of Public Health, National Yang-Ming University, 3Department of Chinese Medicine, Taipei Hospital, 4Department of Pediatrics, Taipei Hospital, 5Department of Internal Medicine, Chia-I Hospital, 6Department of Radiology, Taipei Hospital, 7Institute of Biomedical Sciences, Academia Sinica, Taipei, 8Institute of Chinese Medicine, China Medical University and, 9Center for Traditional Chinese Medicine, Chang Gung Memorial Hospital and Graduate Institute of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Chang Gung University, Taiwan

Natural herbal medicine (NHM) has been used to control infectious diseases for thousands of years. In view of the possible beneficial effect of NHM on SARS, we conducted this study to examine whether NHM is of any benefit as a supplementary treatment of SARS or SARS-like infectious disease. This was a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial. Twenty-eight patients fulfilled the WHO inclusion criteria and our exclusion criteria. All enrolled patients received routine western-medicine treatment. Patients were randomly allocated to one of the three supplementary treatment groups: NHM A (Group A, n = 9) NHM B (Group B, n = 9) or placebo (Group C, n = 10). Chest X-ray was done every 1 or 2 days for every patient. Reading radiologists use a standard 0–3 scoring system (0: no infiltration; 1: focal haziness or even small patchy lesion; 2: ground glass picture; 3: lobar consolidation) according to the severity of infiltration in each lung field (three lung fields in both right and left lungs). The main outcome measurements were the improving chest radiographic scores (IRS) and the duration (days) till improvement (DI). One patient from the placebo group passed away. Patients from NHM A took less days before showing improvement (6.7 ± 1.8) compared with placebo group (11.2 ± 4.9), which showed statistical significance (P = 0.04). The cases were too few to be conclusive, the initial observations seem to indicate NHM appears to be safe in non-criticallly ill patients and clinical trials are feasible in the setting of pandemic outbreaks.

Keywords: avian influenza – nature herbal medicine – SARS

For reprints and all correspondence: Dr P. H. Pesus Chou, Community Medicine Research Center and Institute of Public Health, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan, 155, Li-Nong St, Sec 2, Peitou, Taipei, Taiwan. Tel: 886-2-2826-7050; Fax: 886-2-28201461; E-mail: pschou{at}ym.edu.tw

Received August 8, 2006; accepted December 18, 2006


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