BEIJING, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- With traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) gaining wider recognition in recent years, medical experts have eyed that it will play a bigger role in both tumor and chronic disease control.
Integrating TCM with Western medicine and traditional medicine with modern medicine, via an interdisciplinary approach, is going to be a trend, according to experts who attended the 2024 World Conference on Traditional Medicine, which concluded in Beijing earlier this week.
"The integration of TCM with Western medicine can give full play to the advantages of two medical systems," said Zhang Haibo, director of the tumor department at the Guangdong provincial hospital of TCM.
Shedding light on how much difference TCM can make to cancer treatment, Zhang said TCM can play a particularly "dominant" role in both preventing tumors and inhibiting recurrence.
"In the terminal stage and in the case of palliative treatment, also when patients are not tolerant of or unable to accept chemotherapy and other Western medical treatment, TCM can help improve their life quality and prolong their survival," he said when explaining another benefit of TCM treatment.
In fact, integrating TCM with Western medicine to combat cancer is growing in popularity in China, with more and more patients benefiting from such an approach.
A small-cell lung cancer patient, then 61, resumed his normal life after receiving integrated treatment featuring TCM and chemotherapy.
The male patient was diagnosed with advanced lung cancer in 2021. Resistance to Western drugs compelled him to pin hopes on traditional medicine. He was admitted to a hospital affiliated with the Shanghai University of TCM in February 2022.
After four rounds of integrated treatment, a re-examination revealed that his tumor marker had decreased even without chemotherapy, and his immunity was improving.
According to the National Cancer Center, the five-year survival rate of malignant tumor patients in China increased from 40.5 percent in 2015 to 43.7 percent in 2022. Experts believe TCM has made an indispensable contribution to this progress.
Experts have also acknowledged the value of TCM in preventing and controlling major chronic diseases -- a common challenge facing human health globally.
In China, the incidence of chronic diseases, including cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, is on the rise. The number of deaths from such diseases accounts for more than 80 percent of the total, according to the National Health Commission.
Due to a high incidence, long course of disease and heavy financial burdens, chronic diseases have become a major factor that threatens people's health. It is even more so with an aging population.
Liu Liang, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE), emphasized a three-pronged principle of TCM intervention in disease development -- preventing disease onset, preventing disease from worsening and preventing relapse after recovery.
He said this principle is exactly in accordance with the need to prevent and control chronic diseases, while adding that medical evidence has proved the efficacy of TCM in tackling chronic infectious arthritis and chronic heart failure.
TCM has been endorsed by the Chinese government to play a role in chronic disease prevention and control. An outline issued by the cabinet in 2017, for the period through 2025, laid out measures including enhancing people's TCM-based health management and formulating a TCM-led plan for intervention in such diseases.
Experts have also called for applying a multi-disciplinary approach and leveraging advanced modern technologies, such as artificial intelligence and big data, to cope with the difficulty of elucidating the activity mechanism of TCM.
Zhang Boli, a CAE academician who is known for his contributions to curbing COVID-19 via TCM, expounded on how TCM combats infectious disease from the perspective of modern science.
"TCM primarily exerts its effects through inflammatory immune regulation, mediated by macrophages, NK cells and other immune cells," Zhang explained.
Rudolf Bauer, chairman of the European Pharmacopoeia Committee on TCM, said the search for active compounds in traditional medicine is just like "searching for the needle in a haystack."
Bauer suggested applying holistic concepts, interdisciplinary approaches and collaboration, while also taking synergistic effects into consideration, when explaining the functioning of traditional medicine. ■
