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Traditional Chinese Herbal Medicine and Lupus Nephritis

Xiaozhen Mu, Quan Jiang and Chenchen Wang

Available treatments for lupus nephritis, a potentially fatal autoimmune disease, are limited by suboptimal efficacy and increased risk of infections and malignancies; inevitably they do not meet clinical demands. Traditional Chinese herbal medicine has recently been recognized for its potential therapeutic benefits for lupus nephritis. Encouraging evidence from clinical trials and observational studies demonstrate that Chinese herbal medicine may possess benefits for treating patients with lupus nephritis. The significant benefits of these Chinese herbal medicine modalities that have been observed and reported include improving clinical efficacy, reducing level of antibodies and proteinuria, ameliorating renal damage, diminishing the dosage of prednisone use as well as decreasing toxicity, and preventing disease flare-up. This overview aggregates the current body of medical knowledge on the therapeutic benefits of several types of Chinese herbal medicines for lupus nephritis, and these promising herbal medicines may challenge the current treatment paradigms available for lupus nephritis and inform future research and clinical practice.