Traditional Chinese herbal medicines for the treatment of cardiovascular diseases

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of death in both developed and developing countries. As the size of the elderly population rapidly increases worldwide, CVD's impact on public health and CVD-associated economic costs will become ever more challenging. It has been estimated that the costs for treating all current patients with hypertension or hyper lipidaemia in China using Western drugs would consume almost a third of China's total healthcare expenditure. A more cost-effective alternative, however, might be the systematic and scientifically informed use of what 80% of the developing world must primarily rely on for pharmacotherapy: herbal medicines. Before China was exposed to modern Western scientific medicine (mainly during the last century), it had developed a system of medical thought and practice that is distinct from that of Western medicine. The theory and practice of this unique form of medicine, now often called Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), are integral parts of Chinese culture and have been discussed and documented in classical literature written over more than 2000 years. Modern databases of the Chinese and International scientific literature now contain thousands of articles with relevance to TCM. Here, we provide an introduction to the TCM classification and treatment of CVD and an overview of scientific research aimed at elucidating the biological effects and molecular mechanisms of TCM herbs used in the treatment of CVD. Published data show that herbal medicines possess biological activity that parallels that of the major classes of drugs used in orthodox CVD pharmacotherapy. A plethora of compounds with effects on a large number of both previously validated and presently novel molecular targets have been isolated from herbal medicines. Together, these data provide a basis for hypothesis-guided basic and clinical research into the use of herbal medicines for effective and affordable CVD therapy.