Review of experimental and clinical studies on Soyangin (少陽人) Yanggyeoksanhwa-tang (凉膈散火湯) in Korea since 2000

摘要

This paper was aimed to review experimental and clinical studies on Yanggyeoksanhwa-tang (YGSH; 凉膈散火湯), figuring out the recent tendency and suggesting the future prospects of YGSH-related studies. The articles published in 19 journals of Korean Medicine since 2000 were searched, screened, and classified into experimental or clinical studies. And we structured designs, methods and results of the included studies into each table for the experimental studies or the clinical studies. Especially tools to diagnose constitutions and patterns identified in clinical researches were also summarized in the tables. Thirty-five articles were finally included. Sixteen experimental studies were mostly in vivo designs to show the efficacy of YGSH in stroke patients. There were only two studies for the safety. The efficacy was measured physically and chemically depending on the target diseases. Seventeen case studies mostly targeted stroke, too. The pattern identified in the reports varied from Chest-Heat congested (Hyunggyeok-yeol) Symptomatology (胸膈熱病) to Stomach Heat-based Interior Heat (Wesuyeol-liyeol) Disease (胃受熱裏熱病) or Upper Wasting-Thirst (Sangso) Pattern (上消證) of Soyangin (少陽人). The evaluations of outcomes were carried out mostly with symptomatic change except for a few studies. A controlled clinical trial reported the effectiveness of YGSH in the patients with cerebral infarction, while a before & after study with diabetes. Well-designed randomized controlled trials should be performed in the future in order to obtain higher level of evidences for using YGSH.