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Review
. 2021 Jan:133:111072.
doi: 10.1016/j.biopha.2020.111072. Epub 2020 Dec 8.

Traditional Chinese medicine combined with pulmonary drug delivery system and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis: Rationale and therapeutic potential

Yukun Zhang  1 , Peng Lu  1 , Huan Qin  1 , Yuelin Zhang  1 , Xinru Sun  1 , Xunan Song  1 , Jingjing Liu  1 , Hui Peng  1 , Yiting Liu  1 , Ebuka Olisaemeka Nwafor  1 , Jiawei Li  2 , Zhidong Liu  3
Affiliations
Review

Traditional Chinese medicine combined with pulmonary drug delivery system and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis: Rationale and therapeutic potential

Yukun Zhang et al. Biomed Pharmacother. 2021 Jan.

Abstract

Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a progressive pulmonary interstitial inflammatory disease of unknown etiology, and is also a sequela in severe patients with the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). Nintedanib and pirfenidone are the only two known drugs which are conditionally recommended for the treatment of IPF by the FDA. However, these drugs pose some adverse side effects such as nausea and diarrhoea during clinical applications. Therefore, it is of great value and significance to identify effective and safe therapeutic drugs to solve the clinical problems associated with intake of western medicine. As a unique medical treatment, Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) has gradually exerted its advantages in the treatment of IPF worldwide through a multi-level and multi-target approach. Further, to overcome the current clinical problems of oral and injectable intakes of TCM, pulmonary drug delivery system (PDDS) could be designed to reduce the systemic metabolism and adverse reactions of the drug and to improve the bioavailability of drugs. Through PubMed, Google Scholar, Web of Science, and CNKI, we retrieved articles published in related fields in recent years, and this paper has summarized twenty-seven Chinese compound prescriptions, ten single TCM, and ten active ingredients for effective prevention and treatment of IPF. We also introduce three kinds of inhaling PDDS, which supports further research of TCM combined with PDDS to treat IPF.

Keywords: COVID-19; Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis; Pulmonary drug delivery system; Traditional Chinese medicine.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest for publishing this manuscript.

Figures

None
Graphical abstract
Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Diffuse alveolitis and damage to alveolar structure in IPF.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Chemical structures of the active components in TCM.
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
The picture of the particle size and position of inhaled particles in the PDDS.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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