Traditional Chinese medicines and their effective components for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis: a systematic review

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a systemic, autoimmune, and one of refractory disease, which belongs to „arthromyodynia“ in Chinese medicine. Traditional Chinese medicines (TCM) were utilized for treatment of RA in clinic for a long history. In recent years, a large number of experiments were carried out for anti-RA effects of TCM A and their effective components in China and many other countries. In this review, more than 20 Chinese medicines which are commonly used such as Tripterygium giumwilfordii Hook, Salvia miltiorrhiza Bunge, Paeonia sterniana Fletcher, etc. and their effective components such as triptolide, sinomenine, total glucosides of paeony for the treatment of RA are summarized. Furthermore, sinomenine injection, tripterygium glycosides tablet and total glucosides of paeony capsules as well as other new drugs prepared from TCM have been developed for therapy of RA and used popularly in clinic. Further investigations are required to elucidate the possible action mechanism of these medicines and components and determine their potential for clinical use needs to be demonstrated in clinical trials.

Acknowledgement: This review was supported by the Science and Technology Commission Research Projects of Shanghai Municipality (10DZ1972000).