Artesunate Treatment Of Systemic Lupus Erythematosus Clinical Studies

ObjectiveSystemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is a multi-systemic autoimmune disease by distributed abroadly everywhere, and what's more, the incidence of SLE goes up annually. Because of delicate clinic symptoms, it was regarded as a difficulty disease. With the progress of immunology and checkout technique, the medical realm realize the harm of SLE generally. But the pathogeny and the pathology's mechanism of SLE are still uncertain so far. Artesunate has an immune double adjusting effect. It is initially used to treat the malaria and later incidentally discovered to have a curative effect for SLE, and yet the clinical report is little. In order to evaluate it's clinical effect on SLE and realize it's toxic and side effect, we apply a clinical study of the clinical documents of 149 SLE patients.Study on Works of TCM and Western MedicineThe western medicine consider SLE as a autoimmune disease, and use the hormone or the immunosuppression to treat it.There is no term of SLE in classic Traditional Chinese Medicine(TCM) works. In the term of it's character and manifestation this disease is vested in "arthralgia syndrome", "arthralgia disease", "yin yang toxicity", "butterfllylike spot", and so on.Nowadays different Traditional Chinese Medicine(TCM) scholars have different opinion on SLE. Most of mem explain it as invasion of wind, cold, dampness, heat, sun pathogen on the condition of deficiency of vital-qi, tiredness, damnification, sensibility disharmony, and post partum, etc. The therapeutics have nourishing vin, and clearing away heat from the body, removing toxic material, and eliminating stagnancy,etc.Artesunate has a immune double adjusting effect and can treat SLE.Clinical StudySetting: the first hospital affiliated to Guangzhou University of Traditional Chinese Medicine.Patients/participants: All the patients involved in the study were the successive inpatients and outpatients of the department of the medicine and the skin of the first hospital affiliated to Guangzhou University of Traditional Chinese Medicine(TCM) from October,1999 to Febreary,2002. The selected cases were those meeting the ARAcriteria for TCM, 1982, and the revised criteria based on the clinical golden rule of Traditional Chinese Medicine(TCM).Methods: The international currency grade standard table for SLE is adopted, and 149 patients was randomly divided into three groups in accordance with the scores. All the data of the clinical symptoms' improvement and the interrelated guideline were input to computer to deal with and analyze.Result: In the clinical symptoms and the interrelated guidelines, there are more or less improvements in three groups. The second and third group have no difference, but they have obviously advantage compared with the first.Conclusions1.On the treatment of SLE, different syndromes in TCM is the outbalance based onmedicine. 2.According to theory of TCM and modern medicine, it is necessary to developpreparation of Chinese herbs. 3.There are some problems in treament for SLE.