Lei Gong Teng Works as well as Pain Medicine

Chinese Herb Works as well as Pain Therapy, Study Shows

BEIJING — A centuries-old Chinese medical herb known as thunder god vine eased the pain and swelling of rheumatoid arthritis as effectively as the commonly prescribed methotrexate, a study showed.

In a trial of 207 patients in China, those who took extracts of the herb showed slightly more improvement than those on methotrexate alone; combining the two boosted efficacy significantly over methotrexate alone. The study appears in the Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases published by BMJ, formerly known as the British Medical Journal.

While traditional Chinese medicine has been practiced for hundreds of years, research into its benefits compared with today's standard therapies has been limited. Thunder god vine could become a new approach to treating rheumatoid arthritis because not all patients respond to methotrexate and modern biologic treatments, such as Amgen Inc.'s Enbrel, are expensive, the researchers wrote in the report.

"While the herb has been used to treat rheumatoid arthritis in China for many centuries, there wasn't clinical evidence of its efficacy compared with current standard medical treatments," said lead author Xuan Zhang, a doctor at the Peking Union Medical College Hospital's Department of Rheumatology. "The results were very clear because on many indicators it performed slightly better than methotrexate."

The researchers used a standard measurement based on a 50 percent improvement in the number of tender or swollen joints, along with criteria including pain and disability. The proportion of those achieving the standard after 24 weeks of the trial was 77 percent among those treated with both drugs, 55 percent among those on the herbal extract, and 46.5 percent for those on methotrexate.

The full story is from Chicago Tribune.