Herbal soup fights flu A, perhaps useful to guard off swine flu too?

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CM NEWS – Swine flu outbreak has scared the world recently, with death toll reaching 100 and counting. While scientists are racing to understand the flu and in full effort to formulate a new vaccine against it, the only things ordinary folks like us can do is to keep ourselves healthy and strong to guard off infection. In traditional Asian medicine, a decoction called Ma Huang Tang (麻黃湯) in Chinese or Mao-to in Japanese.

What’re in Ma Huang Tang?

The main ingredients of Ma Huang Tang are:

ma huang 麻黃; ephedra	ma huang 麻黃; ephedra
gui zhi 桂枝; Cinnamomum cassia Blume or cinnamon twig	gan cao 甘草; Radix Glycyrrhizae

In a Japanese study conducted to evaluate the effect of oral Mao-to (麻黃湯) administration in children with type A influenza, the Mao-to powder was more effective in controlling fever due to flu A than administering an antiviral drug commonly used to fight flu A, Oseltamivir, alone.

What is Oseltamivir? Oseltamivir is an antiviral drug that is used in the treatment and prophylaxis of both Influenzavirus A and Influenzavirus B infection. Like zanamivir, oseltamivir is a neuraminidase inhibitor. It acts as a transition-state analogue inhibitor of influenza neuraminidase, preventing progeny virions from emerging from infected cells.

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In the Japanese study, the scientists performed a controlled trial of 60 children, from 5 months through 13 years of age, with fever and influenza-like symptom of up to 48 h duration. Patients assigned into the following 3 groups: oral Mao-to powder 0.06 g/kg body wt. three times daily; Oseltamivir 2 mg/kg body wt. dose twice daily; or both oral Mao-to plus Oseltamivir.

The results indicated that the median duration of fever after treatment was significantly shorter in the Mao-to and Mao-to plus Oseltamivir groups, compared with the Oseltamivir only group. It was thus concluded by the scientists that oral Mao-to administration was effective in the control of fever due to type A influenza infection in children.

[Phytomedicine. 2007 Feb;14(2-3):96-101. Epub 2006 Dec 1.]