Theoretical and Clinical Evidences of Dispelling Wind and Eliminating Dampness Therapy for Allergic Rhinitis / 中国实验方剂学杂志

ABSTRACT

The pathological mechanism of allergic rhinitis (AR) involves hierarchically acute and chronic reactions among antigens, immunocytes, immunoglobulins and inflammatory factors. AR, which is characterized by heterogeneity, reacts differently to the current treatment on diverse individuals. Some patients receive unsatisfying clinical outcomes after the treatment. Chinese herbal medicine has become a frequent option to treat AR because it can improve clinical symptoms with excellent safety. The description of Biqiu in ancient Chinese medical literatures is very similar to the clinical manifestation of AR. The major pathogeneses of Biqiu included infection of wind-cold pathogens, deficiency and cold in the lung, and evil depression into heat and wind. Therefore, in modern traditional Chinese medicine （TCM）, Biqiu is considered as an integration of AR, allergic sinusitis and vasomotor rhinitis. According to the pathogenesis and clinical manifestations of Biqiu (including AR), this disease belongs to wind disease in TCM. But modern TCM focuses on deficiency of internal organs and ignores wind evil in syndrome differentiation, contrary to the fact that wind medicine is always used in treating AR. This even leads to an abnormal phenomenon that clinical studies attach little importance to syndrome differentiation. In this paper, we started from the phenomenon that wind medicine is always used in TCM for AR, considering TCM literatures and the study results of modern therapy for wind diseases, and put forward the ideas as follows: AR belongs to exogenous wind disease in TCM, and wind pathogen is the major pathogen, in clinical syndrome differentiation, we should attach more importance to wind evil, and dispelling wind and eliminating dampness is the key to treatment. Meanwhile, based on the fact that most of the classical prescriptions with good effectiveness for AR originated from Treatise on Febrile Disease, mainly including the wind medicines for treating exogenous diseases, it can be inferred that the wind-dispelling and itch-arresting effects of wind medicines are helpful to alleviate or block the allergic reaction of nasal mucus and achieve the goal of relieving itching and sneezing, and the wind-dispelling and dampness-eliminating effects are helpful to alleviate the edema of nasal mucus and achieve the goal of relieving running nose and nasal obstruction. In modern researches, it is also found that classical prescriptions which take wind medicine as a principle component and wind medicine used in AR treatment have good anti-inflammatory, anti-allergic and immune function adjusting effects. This indicates that dispelling wind and eliminating dampness and the wind medicine treatment under its instruction not only correspond to TCM theory, but also have modern science evidences.