RESUMEN
In order to evaluate the advantages and problems of serum pharmacochemistry of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) for screening active ingredients, all literatures concerned from 2003 to 2013 were searched and analyzed. According to our statistics, there were 88 Chinese materia medica (CMM) formulae or single herbs involved; Nine hundred and seventy components were absorbed into blood, including 582 prototype components and 388 metabolites; Among them, 270 prototype components (46.4%) were identified, and only 37 metabolites (9.53%) were identified. Further investigation suggested that 80.37% of the absorbed prototype components identified were pharmacologically active according to relative reports. Thus, the above method is not only fast, accurate, and cost-saving, but also easy to operate, popularize, and utilize in most screening cases of CMM. However, this method has certain limitations at the range of application and problems such as non-standard, non-system, no indepth, low internationalization or industry promotion.