Study on Prescription Characteristics of Chinese Patent Medicines for Antitussive Effect / 世界科学技术-中医药现代化

ABSTRACT

This study was aimed to reveal characteristics of functions, main indications and applications of Chinese patent medicines in order to provide references for development of new Chinese patent medicines for antitussive ef-fect. Chinese patent medicines recorded in the Pharmacopoeia of the People's Republic of China and the New Na-tional Chinese Patent Medicines were taken as research subjects. Chinese patent medicines classified in the function and indication with key words of cough-relieving, cough-suppressing, cough and chronic cough were col-lected. Analysis was made on the prescription characteristics, such as functions, main indications and applications. The results showed that there were 684 Chinese patent medicines and 462 terms, which were used for a total of 1533 times. The frequently-used terms are antitussive effect with expectorant, antitussive effect, expectorant, heat-clearing and exterior-releasing, antiasthmatic, wind-expelling and antipyretic, antitussive effect with antiasthmatic, purging lung heat, relieving exterior syndrome and moistening the lungs. All 684 Chinese patent medicines were used 48 ma-jor treatments for a total of 1107 times. The main indications include acute and chronic trachitis / bronchitis, exoge-nous wind-heat type of common cold, exogenous wind-cold type of common cold, cough with abundance of phlegm due to phlegm-heat obstructing the lung, acute upper respiratory tract infection, asthma, acute and chronic pharyngi-tis, lung heat cough, and etc. All 684 Chinese patent medicines used a total of 537 kinds of herbs and chemical medicines, including 441 kinds of herbal medicine, 36 kinds of animal medicine, 25 kinds of mineral medicine and 35 kinds of chemical medicine. The top ten herbs in terms of using frequency are Glycyrrhizae radix et rhizoma, Platycodonis radix, Armeniacae semen amarum, Menthae haplocalycis herba, Citri reticulatae pericarpium, Ephedrae herba, Scutellariae radix, Perilla frutescens (L.) Britt, Pinelliae rhizoma, Fritillariae cirrhosae bulbus. Among them, 1/4 of Chinese patent medicines used extract. Five kinds of food or fruits were also used, which were orange, fresh gin-ger, pear, watermelon and dried mushroom. It was concluded that Chinese patent medicines for antitussive effect can be adopted in the treatment of various kinds of diseases, especially for the treatment of cough(heat cough in partic-ular), abundance of phlegm, asthma, pharyngitis, laryngitis, and etc. The treatment methods of clearing heat, dis-pelling wind and relieving exterior syndrome played an important role in the realization of antitussive effect. However, the expression of functions and main indications is far from standardized and clear. Drugs commonly used are herbal medicine plus animal medicine, mineral medicine and chemical medicine as well as food and fruit. The discovery of preparations with certain clinical curative effect from ethnomedicine and the using of their extracts as a major ingre-dient are one important way to develop new Chinese patent medicines with antitussive effect.