title: 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.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Community Medicine Research Center National Yang-Ming University, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Chung-Hua
authors.initials: CH
authors.lastname: Hsu
authors.forename: Kung-Chang
authors.initials: KC
authors.lastname: Hwang
authors.forename: Chung-Liang
authors.initials: CL
authors.lastname: Chao
authors.forename: Steve G N
authors.initials: SG
authors.lastname: Chang
authors.forename: Mei-Shang
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Ho
authors.forename: Jaung-Geng
authors.initials: JG
authors.lastname: Lin
authors.forename: Hen-Hong
authors.initials: HH
authors.lastname: Chang
authors.forename: Shung-Te
authors.initials: ST
authors.lastname: Kao
authors.forename: Yi-Ming
authors.initials: YM
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Pesus
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Chou