RESUMO
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease （COPD） is a common and frequently-occurring disease of the respiratory system， characterized by persistent respiratory symptoms and airflow restriction， which is prone to attack repeatedly and affect patients' quality of life seriously. At present， the combination of bronchodilators and inhaled corticosteroids is commonly used in clinic. Although these drugs can alleviate the symptoms of COPD patients， there are certain limitations of the difficulty in controlling the course of the disease effectively and reversing the decline of patients' lung function. Therefore， searching for safer and more effective therapeutic drugs has become a hot research topic nowadays. Traditional Chinese medicine （TCM） has remarkable curative effects and advantages in the prevention and therapy of COPD recently. Based on the increasing research and application of the active components of TCM in the therapy of COPD， studies on their pharmacodynamic mechanism are also more in depth. More and more studies have found that the active components of TCM can treat COPD patients effectively， and the mechanism involved mainly includes the anti-inflammatory， the antioxidant， and the inhibition of apoptosis. By searching and screening the domestic and foreign literatures on the treatment of COPD with the active components of TCM in recent years， the active components of TCM including flavonoids， terpenoids， phenols and saponins have been studied as the research objects， and their effects in improving the pulmonary function and oxidative stress， relieving inflammation and inhibiting apoptosis are expounded. Besides， the mechanism of action， signaling pathways and index molecules have been emphatically summarized， in order to provide the ideas for the clinical therapy and the basic research of COPD.