Application of Chinese Medicine in Acute and Critical Medical Conditions.

Western medicine is routinely used in developed nations as well as in Eastern countries, where traditional medicine is frequently used by a selection of patients or family member as a complement to mainstream Western medicine. Chinese medicine plays an important role in the treatment of chronic diseases, especially when Western medicine is not very effective. Many published reports have shown that Chinese medicine could also be successfully used in the management of acute and critical illnesses. Chinese medicine has a holistic view of the human body, and emphasizes individualization based on body balance and mind-body interaction and employs herbal medicines and acupuncture. This review paper gives a brief overview of Chinese medicine theory and therapeutic modality and then addresses the application of Chinese medicine in the treatment of acute and critical medical conditions, including epidemics. Using this ancient therapy as a complementary medicine, the management of serious medical conditions, such as SARS, acute heart diseases, and ischemic cerebral stroke, are presented. In order to promote more widespread application of Chinese medicine, well-designed controlled clinical trials are urgently needed to prove its safety and effectiveness.

Fecal metabolomic dataset of American ginseng-treated DSS mice: Correlation between ginseng enteric inflammation inhibition and its biological signatures.

Although anti-inflammatory effects of American ginseng metabolites have been investigated at systemic and cellular levels, the biological signatures of ginseng microbial metabolite-induced bioactivities are still unknown. To fill this knowledge gap and to support the findings published in the companion research article entitled "American ginseng microbial metabolites attenuated DSS-induced colitis and abdominal pain" (Wang et al., 2018), we are here to provide datasets of enteric microbiome biotransformation and fecal metabolomics. For the microbiome biotransformation study, data were obtained from C57BL6 mice treated with a broad-spectrum antibiotic metronidazole. After oral administration of ginseng extract, we observed that compound K (CK) was undetectable in metronidazole-treated mouse stools but was detected in stools from vehicle-treated mice, suggesting biotransformation of CK is gut microbial dependent. In the fecal metabolomic study, three small molecules which were associated with gut inflammation were identified. In the DSS mice, the levels of lactate, linoleic acid, and malic acid increased significantly in the model group. After ginseng treatment, the expressions of these metabolites reduced significantly. Thus, the selective fecal endogenous metabolites could be used as biological signatures reflecting severity of enteric inflammation and ginseng treatment outcomes. Our results showed the enteric microbiome plays a key role for CK conversion, and the effects of CK on enteric inflammation can be demonstrated by the metabolomics data.