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. 2019 Mar 5;13:190. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2019.00190

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Copyright © 2019 Zhang and Cheng.

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

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Composition of a typical Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) formula. In general, there are four classes of drugs in each formula: emperor drugs, minister drugs, messenger drugs, and assistant drugs. One TCM formula contains at least one emperor drug supplemented by minister, assistant, and messenger drugs at varying numbers from zero to multiple, in order to ensure effective actions on various targets simultaneously. The empirical composite formulas have been proven to have greater efficacy and safety than single drugs in clinical practices, possibly due to their synergistic interaction and mutual detoxification (Ung et al., 2007). The composition and dosage depend on the signs or symptoms of individual patients and can be modified to fit specific individuals more accurately, in accordance with the idea of individual therapy in modern medicine. The major risk of TCM is thought to be the use if a combination of several herbs with some uncertain factors, such as toxicity, consistency of bioactive ingredients, drug-drug interaction, and so on. All of these present major challenges the development of TCM but can be managed by proper processing to minimize toxic effects, standardization of formulas by quality control to ensure a consistent level of bioactive ingredients and reproducible pharmacological actions, proper dosing and avoiding usage at the same time as other drugs, respectively.