Research On The Treatment Of Rheumatosis-related Interstitial Lung Disease With Phlegm And Toxin By Prof. Ma Yu-chen

Professor Ma Yu-chen thinks that rheumatosis-related interstitial lung disease can be considered as Arthromyodynia in lung from TCM theory. It is different from the common lung disease, such as chronic bronchitis, pulmonary emphysema and pneumonitis, which are characterized by cough, wheeze, phlegm and gasping. It has two individual features. Firstly, patients feel uncomfortable in limbs, which are called Arthromyodynia in five-ti. Patients may have arthralgia, joint deformities or muscle atrophy. Those destructions of joints coincide with the damage caused by "Toxin". Secondly, the lung symptoms persist for a long time and are easy to recur. These can be distinguished as phlegm syndromes. Besides, both CT manifestation and histopathology observation show the typical appearance of pulmonary fibrosis. The microscopic observation and the changes of its related immune indexes are in accordance with "Phlegm" and "Toxin" theories. In conclusion, rheumatosis-related interstitial lung disease can be considered as the consequence of invasion and turbid accumulation of "Toxin" and "Phlegm". So Professor Ma argues that a combination of expelling toxin and eliminating phlegm can be effective in the treatment of rheumatosis-related interstitial lung disease. This study was aimed to testify this view and to evaluate the efficacy of Xiongfusan on the treatment of rheumatosis-related interstitial lung disease by animal trial and clinical trial.In the clinical trial, a total of 63 patients diagnosed with rheumatosis-related interstitial lung disease from Department of rheumatology in our hospital were randomly assigned into two groups. There are 30 patients in control group treated with regular decoction, and 33 patients in treatment group treated with Xiongfusan. Three months was a treatment course. As a result, there was significant difference on effective rate (x2=6.7 P<0.05). There are significant differences between two groups in the symptoms, the lung function and CT manifestation. In the animal trial, we found that enzymatic activity of SOD and GSH-PX were obviously higher than other groups (P<0.01) and the level of MDA was lower (P<0.05) in the lung tissues of the herbal treatment group. These showed that Xiongfusan can promote the activity of antioxidant enzyme in the damaged tissue, stop the fibrosis process initiated by oxygen free radical. Its concrete mechanisms should be studied in the future.