Available online 11 January 2023, 100627

The National Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine of the People’s Republic of China (NATCM) and the State Administration of Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) advocated a combination therapy of TCM and anti-viral drugs for novel coronavirus pneumonia (NCP) to improve the efficacy of clinical treatment.

Forty-six patients diagnosed with NCP were sequentially divided into intent-to-treat population: the experimental group (combination of FuXi-Tiandi-Wuxing Decoction and anti-viral drugs; n=23) and the control group (anti-viral drugs only) (n=23). The two groups were compared in terms of duration of fever, cough symptom score, fatigue, appetite, dyspnea, out-of-bed activities, chest computer tomography (CT) recovery, virological clearance, average length of hospital stay, and clinical effective rate of drug. After 6 days of observation, patients from the control group were divided into as-treated population: experimental subgroup (n=14) to obtain clinical benefit and control subgroup (n=9).

There was a significant improvement in the duration of fever (1.087±0.288 vs 4.304±2.490), cough (0.437±0.589 vs 2.435±0.662; P<0.05), chest CT evaluation (82.6% vs 43.4%; P<0.05), and virological clearance (60.8% vs 8.7%; P<0.05) in patients of the experimental group compared with patients in the control group. Further observation in as-treated population reported that cough (0.742±0.463 vs 1.862±0.347; P<0.05) and fatigue (78.5% vs 33.3%; P<0.05) were significantly relieved after adding FuXi-Tiandi-Wuxing Decoction to the existing treatment.

An early treatment with combination therapy of FuXi-Tiandi-Wuxing Decoction and anti-viral drugs significantly relieves the clinical symptoms of NCP, shows improvement in chest CT scan, improves virological clearance, shortens average length of hospital stay, and reduces the risk of severe illness. The effect of FuXi-Tiandi-Wuxing Decoction in NCP may be clinically important and require further consideration.

acute respiratory distress syndrome

cytokine release syndrome

enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay

Hemagglutinin Type 1 and Neuraminidase Type 1

National Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine of the People’s Republic of China

novel coronavirus pneumonia

Platycodon grandiflorum

RNA-dependent RNA polymerase

reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction

traditional Chinese medicine

World Health Organization

COVID-19

novel coronavirus pneumonia

prospective

traditional Chinese medicine

anti-viral drug

© 2023 Published by Elsevier GmbH.