Abstract
Chinese medicine has a long history of several thousand years. The main form of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is composite, i.e. a mixture of up to 10 medicinal products. Thus a composite prescription of 4-5 kinds of Chinese medicinal products may contain several hundred kinds of chemical composition. The active ingredients and clinical efficacy of which are difficult to characterize. We aim to review the Chinese literature of TCMs with neuroprotective effects. We illustrate with our study on Pien Tze Huang (PZH) the use of in vivo tests in the study of composite TCM. Our results show evidence that PZH might have neuropreventive effects in rats.
Keywords: Cerebral ischemia, cerebral stroke, neuroprotection, composite traditional Chinese Medicine, Pien Tze Huang, Ginkgo Biloba, Angong Niuhuang Wan, Compound Danshen Dripping Pill, water maze, functional magnetic resonance imaging