Artemisia annua in the treasure house
The winners of the 20 1 1 lasker prize were announced, and Tu Youyou won the clinical medicine prize on the grounds that "the discovery of artemisinin, a drug used to treat malaria, has saved millions of lives all over the world, especially in developing countries." This matter has something to do with it and will cause a great sensation in the world. What does it have to do with medicine? First of all, we should know that Tu Youyou/Kloc graduated from Beijing Medical College in 0/9 and worked as a researcher in the Academy of Chinese Medicine. She used modern scientific methods to extract artemisinin-sesquiterpene lactone from Artemisia annua, a plant called Chinese medicine. It's western medicine, but it's not Chinese medicine at all. Its relationship with Chinese medicine is as follows:
Kim. Ge Hong's "Elbow Backup Emergency Prescription" has more than 30 prescriptions (omitted) under item 16 of the prescriptions for treating cold-heat malaria, one of which is "a pinch of Artemisia annua, dipped in two liters of water, and the juice is exhausted". Li Shizhen's "Artemisia annua" is mainly used to treat scabies and sores, kill lice, treat intra-articular fever, improve eyesight, lingering ghosts and corpses, women's blood gas, abdominal distension, chronic diarrhea, cold and heat. Use seeds in autumn and winter, use seedlings in spring and summer, and mash them to get juice. Also * * * for the end, urine into the wine kimono. Tonify the middle energizer, resist fatigue, preserve color, promote hair growth, resist aging, remove garlic hair and kill wind poison. Heartache is hot and yellow, take it from raw juice and paste it. Treat malaria, cold and heat (Shizhen). It's good to cure tendon sores, stop bleeding and relieve pain. Burn ashes, drench juice with paper, and fry with plaster to treat malignant sores, polyps and scars. "* * * more than 20 diseases.
He said in the fu: "Artemisia annua is a good product for treating bone steaming, heat and fatigue. It was used alone in ancient times." On another occasion, Zhen said: "Artemisia annua was the first to get the qi of yang deficiency in spring wood, so the main symptoms are all yang deficiency, and the blood of Jue Yin is also divided." According to the "General Compilation of the Moon Order", it is the day of lying on the boxer, picking Artemisia annua and hanging it in the hall to avoid evil spirits. Dry in the shade is the end, and it's not bad to get two yuan each for winter solstice and New Year's Day. Look at this, Artemisia annua can cure ghosts and hide corpses, and the cover is also taken. "
Since quinine was introduced into China, no one has treated malaria with traditional Chinese medicine for nearly a hundred years. At the beginning of the research, no famous Chinese medicine practitioner put forward effective Chinese medicine.
The cold-heat malaria mentioned in Elbow Jifang and the malaria cold-heat mentioned in the book refer to febrile diseases, not malaria. Artemisia annua includes Artemisia annua, Artemisia annua, Artemisia scoparia, Artemisia annua and Artemisia annua.
Literally, from the "malaria" in Elbow Urgent Prescription, it can be seen that it does not refer to a single disease, so there are more than 30 prescriptions under it. The disease, though uncertain, fortunately provided a unilateral one. Traditional Chinese medicine pays attention to individualized treatment and needs symptomatic treatment. Prescriptions are about monarch, minister, assistant and envoy, and there are few unilateral prescriptions. Here, providing a prescription is a shortcut for researchers. In Compendium of Materia Medica, Artemisia annua can cure more than 20 diseases, but only the words "malaria and cold and heat" are said, which is of little reference value. If we directly say "Artemisia annua cures malaria", it is totally irrelevant.
Tu Youyou graduated from Beijing Medical College. Some people say that after the integration of Chinese and western medicine, I don't think there is such a stage. She should be assigned to a graduate student or transferred to the Institute of Traditional Chinese Medicine at that time. The difference between TCM college and TCM college is not clear. She should be a researcher or a pre-teaching staff, or both. It is impossible to cultivate Chinese medicine without being a clinician. She used modern scientific methods to extract artemisinin from Artemisia annua, which is a western medicine, adding a member to the antimalarial drugs of western medicine.
In this way, did western medicine rob the fruit of Chinese medicine? No, Chinese medicine can use this medicine completely, but you must have malaria with differential symptoms, and you can't go to the laboratory to check plasmodium.
Whether Chinese medicine is an undeveloped treasure house is a treasure house from the perspective of Chinese medicine, and there is no question of whether it is developed or not. From a scientific point of view, there is no relative relationship between the diseases diagnosed and the drugs used, and the two are randomly paired. This so-called medicine can only be its body, minerals and plants. If we need a medicine for treating typhoid fever now, we may not find a medicine for treating typhoid fever among the hundreds of medicines contained in Treatise on Febrile Diseases.
Among thousands of drugs contained in China's famous medical work Compendium of Materia Medica, it is not easy to find several effective drugs by scientific means. If we can find more in the near future, together with artemisinin and ephedrine, it will still be classified as Chinese medicine, which will not change the face of Chinese medicine.
Relationship between artemisinin and traditional Chinese medicine
Recently, Tu Youyou, a scientist from China, won the 20 1 1 annual Lasker Prize for Clinical Medicine for "discovering artemisinin, a drug used to treat malaria, and saving millions of lives in the world, especially in developing countries". Because the Lasker Prize is considered by many people as a grand prize in the field of biomedicine, Tu Youyou's award has aroused great repercussions in China. Some domestic media reported that artemisinin was called Chinese medicine, and said that it rekindled people's hope for innovation in Chinese medicine. In fact, artemisinin is not a traditional Chinese medicine, but a chemical drug with a single component and a clear structure extracted from plants. Many chemical drugs are originally extracted or synthesized from plants, such as Tamiflu, so they can't be called Chinese medicine.
The so-called traditional Chinese medicine should refer to the traditional Chinese medicine used to treat the same kind of medicine. Although Chinese medicine also uses Artemisia annua to treat malaria, Artemisia annua (also known as Artemisia annua) used by Chinese medicine does not contain artemisinin, which has been proved to be ineffective in treating malaria. Artemisinin is extracted from Artemisia annua (also known as Artemisia annua). Artemisia annua is hardly used as medicine in Chinese medicine. If it is used, it is only used to "treat children's cold and fever" and has never been used to treat malaria. Artemisinin was also called lutein or Artemisia annua at first, and later it was called artemisinin to show its relationship with traditional Chinese medicine. Later, Artemisia annua was simply changed into Artemisia annua in Pharmacopoeia, which made people think that artemisinin was really extracted from Artemisia annua.
Traditional Chinese medicine is often regarded as the same medicine because it has no knowledge of plant morphology and taxonomy, and plants of different species, genera and even families look very similar in some aspects. Artemisia annua may sometimes be replaced by Artemisia annua. Even so, artemisinin in it can't play a role, because traditional Chinese medicine treats malaria by boiling the medicine into soup (the most famous soup is Artemisia annua, Anemarrhena asphodeloides, mulberry leaves, turtle shell, peony bark and pollen). Once heated to 60 degrees Celsius, the structure of artemisinin is destroyed and it loses its activity, so it can't kill protozoa.
The discovery of artemisinin is the result of many people's division of labor, cooperation and competition, and whose contribution is great is still debated. However, it is generally believed that Tu Youyou played a key role in discovering that artemisinin lost its activity when heated, and thought of extracting artemisinin with ether. Tu Youyou said that she saw the sentence "Artemisia annua can be soaked in two liters of water, squeezed to get juice, and then suddenly realized that Artemisia annua can't be heated" in Ge Hong's book "Elbow Urgent Prescription" in the Eastern Jin Dynasty. Because of this story, people will say that the discovery of artemisinin was at least inspired by Chinese medicine, and Ge Hong became a "famous doctor in the Eastern Jin Dynasty". In fact, Ge Hong is a alchemist, and the elbow-backed emergency prescription is to collect folk prescriptions, without using yin-yang and five elements and dialectical compatibility, which has nothing to do with Chinese medicine.
In fact, it is doubtful whether this folk prescription recorded by Ge Hong can really cure malaria. Artemisinin is almost insoluble in water (which is why Tu Youyou extracted it with ether). Soak a handful of Artemisia annua in two cups (the "liter" in the Eastern Jin Dynasty was very small, at that time, one liter was equivalent to about 200 ml now, that is, one cup), even if Artemisia annua was used, artemisinin was unlikely to reach the pharmacological concentration. If Ge Hong only recorded that Artemisia annua can cure malaria, we might think it is reasonable. But Ge Hong collected 43 kinds of drugs for malaria in his book, including herbs and witchcraft. Artemisia annua is one of the most unremarkable herbs, which only appeared once (and the herb "Changshan" appeared 13 times), and it was not said how effective the efficacy was. On the contrary, it is those absurd witchcraft, which Ge Hong praised as "healing" and "everything". For example, "It's all malaria. This is a day to hold a rooster, and it is very noisy at the moment. " "You break a soybean (peel it), and write' day' and' month' in the notebook. When you hold "Sun" in your left hand and "Moon" in your right hand, just swallow it. Take it to Japan and don't let anyone know. "
Even if the prescription of Artemisia annua recorded by Ge Hong is really effective in treating malaria, it has not received special care from Ge Hong, and it was almost submerged in the following 1000 years. Although there will be copying in some Chinese medical classics, it is not taken seriously, but only as a reference for literature. Chinese medicine and people are still looking for a cure for malaria. Tu Youyou's research group collected 808 kinds of Chinese herbal medicines that may be anti-malaria, and Yunnan research group collected more than 4 kinds of Chinese herbal medicine prescriptions and prescriptions. So many folk remedies just show that none of them have outstanding effects, otherwise they will all be used. Experiments at that time also proved that none of them were effective.
Indeed, although there are so many folk remedies, the ancients in China have never been able to fight malaria in history, and countless people have died every time malaria is prevalent. Until 1950, there were thousands of malaria patients in China, and hundreds of thousands of people died every year. Ma Weidou used the discovery of artemisinin to explain that "when western medicine did not enter China, China people lived well", which was really a pot of boiling water. The fact is that no Chinese medicine can effectively treat malaria, which can be proved by this historical fact: 1693, Emperor Kangxi suffered from malaria, and all court doctors and folk Chinese medicine practitioners were helpless. Finally, I ate the Cinchona bark powder provided by the French missionary and cured it. Quinine, a western medicine extracted from cinchona, has become one of the most popular and famous drugs since it entered China. In the Peking Opera Shajiabin, the New Fourth Army used quinine to treat malaria, not Artemisia annua or other Chinese herbal medicines.
Artemisinin was developed by concentrating national strength and using marine tactics during the Cultural Revolution. More than 500 researchers from dozens of units spent five years screening more than 40,000 kinds of compounds and herbs, and finally discovered artemisinin by accident. Many prescriptions provided by TCM and TCM classics are useless, which is similar to the efficiency of screening one by one with a Chinese Flora. Some people realize from the discovery of artemisinin that "Chinese medicine is a treasure house that has not been fully developed". Of course, Chinese medicine may contain some chemicals that have not been excavated, but the discovery process of artemisinin just shows that it is extremely difficult, inefficient and lucky to find really useful drugs from countless records of Chinese medicine classics. In the 40 years since the discovery of artemisinin, it is not surprising that countless researchers have never found a second internationally recognized new drug, although they have tried to create miracles from herbs.
Artemisinin is a good medicine, but it should not be over-publicized.
There is no doubt that artemisinin is a good medicine. It's time for Tu Youyou to win the prize. Some media have almost promoted artemisinin to the point of a westward journey, which I think is a bit too much.
I happened to see a blog named Xiao Changqing in Guangxi the day before yesterday. He used to be a doctor in China who supported Africa and worked in Niger, Africa for two years. Niger is the hardest hit area of malaria. On the front line of malaria control, Dr. Xiao found that the first choice for local doctors to treat malaria was strong quinine produced in France, rather than artemisinin produced in China as boasted by some media, because artemisinin was not as effective as strong quinine. Even China's aid workers in Africa have to take quinine with them when they return home to prevent them from contracting late-onset malaria.
The original text of Dr. Xiao Changqing is as follows:
The disease spectrum of each country is closely related to the developed degree of its economy, culture, science and technology, education and so on. Common diseases and frequently-occurring diseases in poor and backward countries are all kinds of infectious diseases. As one of the most famous poor households in the global village, infectious diseases in Niger can be said to be rampant and ubiquitous. The main common diseases are malaria, typhoid fever, dysentery, hepatitis B and cirrhosis, tuberculosis, AIDS, etc., among which malaria is the most common. The local area is extremely poor, mosquitoes are rampant and malaria is prevalent. Most people get malaria 1~2 times a year, and some people even get malaria more often. It is not uncommon for people to die of falciparum malaria. There are a large number of fever patients in the outpatient department and ward of the hospital every day, most of which are caused by malaria.
Medical staff have formed traditional experience. When they see a fever, unless there are obvious other reasons to explain it, they should first consider malaria and give antimalarial treatment. An antimalarial drug produced by the French is called "Li Qiang quinine", which is very effective in treating malaria. Generally, the fever will be reduced after intravenous injection for one day, and the plasmodium in the blood will turn negative after three days. If the body temperature has not dropped for three days, the diagnosis of malaria can be basically ruled out, and then the doctor begins to look for other causes of fever. This medicine has a good curative effect and can be used for any type of malaria. It saves thousands of lives every year and is very popular in the local area. However, China does not produce, and the curative effect cannot be compared with it. Therefore, China compatriots who have worked in Africa are willing to bring a box of "powerful quinine" when they return home, for fear that they will catch late-onset malaria in Africa and will not find a better life-saving medicine when they return home.
Conclusion: From the above introduction, I think everyone knows that Artemisia annua has many therapeutic effects. Just remember that artemisinin is a good medicine, but it can't be over-publicized!
traditional Chinese medicine