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February 28, 2003

Maybe just a little more history. I can only tell you what I know and what I've seen.

Dr. Chiang, the president of Min Tong, went to a St. Louis meeting in May, 1994 of the FDA biochemists and pharmacologists to present his fairly comprehensive HPLC markers for standardization of extracts of herbal formulas and singles. He was well received, but everyone smilingly agreed that no new category for Chinese medicine would ever soon be considered in the U.S.

At that time Dr. Chiang was co-director of Taiwan's FDA. He was in charge of Chinese herbs. The other co-director is in charge of Western pharmaceuticals. They have equivalent counterparts in mainland China. In the 1990s they would meet with each other quarterly, four times per year, to discuss standards as well as imports and exports between their two countries. I found it fascinating that Dr. Chiang, a PhD in pharmacology from University of Tokyo, represented Chinese herbs as a co-equal to Western pharmaceuticals. Don't you think that's rather incredible from our American view point? So in Taiwan and in China, Chinese herbs are a co-equal medicine to pharmaceuticals. Of course, there's lots of jostling and political stuff going on between the paradigms. But everyone is at the table over there. It's really quite a different world.

So if you can read Chinese or get someone you know who reads Chinese, you need to go to websites in China to read the current research. You'll be quite surprised.

You'll also be quite surprised by how many Chinese formulas are being reported regarding their good efficacy in Western peer-reviewed journals on Medline - in English. I pay $250 a year for my Medline account with Aries System Knowledge Finder www.kfinder.com. I wouldn't be able to teach a college course or run my business without it. It's a fundamental tool for any medically oriented scholar like yourself. I can tell from the questions being asked here that few if any one in this discussion has access to this data base. When I started medical school at Univ. of Texas San Antonio in 1985, this was something I had to reference every night. Even as an undergraduate science student in the early 1980s, I had to utilize Indicus Medicus which is the hard bound reference version that pre-dates the online Medline.

Every topic in physiology that I address at the college where I teach has a clinical pathology section. I bring Medline abstracts to class all the time to report on current activity in clinical research. I always bring papers on how Chinese medicine addresses these problems. these papers are in English. If I was a Chinese medical school dean, I'd insist on all of the students getting a Medline account to track the ongoing clinical work in their science. M.D.s read journals every night.

Emmanuel Segmen

A little something to whet your appetite. Here is our beloved U.C. San Francisco being the site of Chinese medicine research on high cholestol. Enjoy.

Effect of a Chinese herbal medicine mixture on a rat model of hypercholesterolemic erectile dysfunction.

J Urol 2000 Nov;164(5):1798-801 (ISSN: 0022-5347)

Bakircioglu ME; Hsu K; El-Sakka A; Sievert KD; Lin CS; Lue TF Department of Urology, University of California San Francisco, School of Medicine, San Francisco, California, USA.

PURPOSE: We examine the effect of a Chinese herbal medicine mixture on erectile function in a rat model of hypercholesterolemic erectile dysfunction. MATERIALS AND METHODS: In this study 32, 3-month-old Sprague-Dawley rats were used. The 8 control animals were fed a normal diet and the remaining 24 were fed 1% cholesterol diet for 4 months. After 2 months herbal medicine was added to the drinking water of the treatment group of 16 rats but not the cholesterol only group of 8. Of the 16 rats 8 received 25 mg./kg. per day (group 1) and 8 received 50 mg./kg. per day (group 2) of Chinese herbal medicine mixture. Serum cholesterol levels were measured at 2 and 4 months. At 4 months erectile function was evaluated with cavernous nerve electrostimulation in all animals. Penile tissues were collected for electron microscopy, and to perform Western blot for endothelial nitric oxide synthase, neuronal nitric oxide synthase, basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF) and caveolin-1. RESULTS: Serum cholesterol levels were significantly higher in animals fed the 1% cholesterol diet compared to controls at 2 and 4 months. Nevertheless, there was no significant difference among group 1 (145 +/- 30 mg./dl.), group 2 (157 +/- 20) and the cholesterol only group (143 +/- 15). Systemic arterial pressure was not significantly different between the animals that were fed the 1% cholesterol diet and the controls. During electrostimulation of the cavernous nerve peak sustained intracavernous pressure was significantly lower in the cholesterol only group (50 +/- 23 cm. H2O) compared to the control group. Conversely erectile function was not impaired in the herbal medicine treated rats. Electron microscopy showed many caveolae with fingerlike processes in the cavernous smooth muscle and endothelial cell membranes in control and treated rats but not in the cholesterol only group of rats. Western blot did not show a difference among groups in protein expression for endothelial nitric oxide synthase and neuronal nitric oxide synthase in penile tissue but caveolin-1 and bFGF protein expression was significantly higher in groups 1 and 2 than in the cholesterol only and control groups. CONCLUSIONS: Rats developed erectile dysfunction after being fed a 1% cholesterol diet for 4 months. Although serum cholesterol levels were similar in the cholesterol only rats and those treated with Chinese herbal medicine mixture, erectile response was significantly better in the treated group. The mechanism of the herbal medicine is unknown. High levels of bFGF and caveolin-1 expression in the treated group may protect the cavernous smooth muscle and endothelial cells from the harmful effect of high serum cholesterol.