ABSTRACT
Realgar is toxic and belongs to drug of poison attack, with anti-cancer, anti-pest, dry wet and expectorant effects. Ancient doctors often used realgar to treat carbuncle, boil, abdominal pain and other diseases. Modern doctors use it to treat malignant tumors and blood diseases. The toxicity of realgar results in a small range of safety in its drug use. Modern scholars combine traditional Chinese medicine with nano-technology means to grind realgar into nano-realgar. Compared with realgar, nano-realgar has an improved bioavailability and reduced toxicity in vivo. Modern pharmacological researches use nano-realgar to interven lung cancer cells, skin cancer cells, cervical cancer cells, ovarian cancer cells and leukemia cells in experiments, which confirmed that nano-realgar has effects in inhibiting cell proliferation, inducing apoptosis and cell differentiation, inhibiting nucleic acid synthesis and angiogenesis, but with antiviral, sterilization of analgesic effects. Modern toxicological studies have been conducted in mice through intragastric treatment with different concentrations of nano-realgar preparation. The symptoms and signs of mice and various auxiliary examination indexes were recorded at different time periods. It was concluded that nano-realgar has regular effects on blood biochemical indexes at safe doses. In clinical trials, nano-realgar was applied to treat damaged wound surface of malignant tumor. It was found that nano-realgar can promote healing of wound surface of tumor, alleviate pain, relieve clinical symptoms, such as bleeding, purulence and odor, and improve quality of life of patients. In addition, with a simple usage and good patient compliance, administration with nano-realgar requires no hospitalization, can save medical resources, and is worthy of clinical promotion and application.