Table 1.

Regulation of intestinal flora and its metabolites by TCMs.

TCM	Animal models	Effect on intestinal flora abundance	Effects on gut microbiota metabolites	Therapeutic effect	Mechanism of action	Document
Barley leaf	Colitic mice	Proteobacteria↑Enterobacteriaceae↓	Inosine, Guanosine↑	Reduces the severity of disease and microbial imbalance	Adenosine is produced by gut microbes to activate PPARγ signalling	(Li et al., 2021)
Gegen cenlian decoction	Type 2 diabetic rat	Faecalibacterium, Roseburia↑	SCFAs↑	Reduces systemic and local inflammation in rats	Increases the content of butyric acid	(Xu et al., 2020)
Ginseng	Obese mice	E.faecalis↑	Nutmeg oleic acid↑	Antiobesity action	Activates BAT and form brown fat to increase energy metabolism	(Quan et al., 2020)
Pu-erh tea	Hyperlipidaemia mice	Lactobacillus, Bacillus, Enterococcus, Lactococcus, Streptococcus↓	Cholesterol, Fat↓	Decreases liver and serum cholesterol levels	Inhibits microorganisms associated with bile salt hydrolase activity and increases ileal binding bile acid levels	(Huang et al., 2019)
Rhubarb	Ulcerative colitis mice	Lactobacillus↑	Uric acid↓	Alleviates dextran sulfate sodium-induced ulcerative colitis	Reduces the concentration of uric acid, the end product of intestinal purine metabolism	(Wu et al., 2020)
Luteolin	Ulcerative colitis mice	Lactobacillus/Prevotella_9↓	Amino acids, Starch, Sucrose↑	Colonic injury significantly reduced and inflammation effectively improved	Inhibition of inflammatory factors expression	(Li et al., 2021)
Radix Paeoniae Alba	Autoimmune thyroiditis rats	Lactobacillus, Prevotellaceae, Romboutsia↑ Firmicutes↓	SCFAs↑	Adjusts the composition and diversity of intestinal flora and improves intestinal mucosal injury	Regulation of inflammatory factors and sIgA to alleviate thyroid follicular injury and colonic mucosal lesion	(Mu et al., 2021)
GeGen QinLian decoction	Influenza virus infectious mice	Akkermansia_muciniphila, Desulfovibrio_C21_c20, Lactobacillus_salivarius↑ Escherichia_coli↓	—	Effectively protecting mice from influenza virus-infected pneumonia	affect systemic immunity, at least in part, through the intestinal flora, thereby protect the mice against influenza virus infectious pneumonia	(Deng et al., 2021)
Wenyang Jiedu Huayu prescription	HBV related liver failure	bifidobacterium↑ enterobacteria↓	Endotoxin↓	Effectively reduce endotoxemia and improve clinical efficacy	Reversing intestinal flora imbalance	(Wen-Fang et al., 2014)
Ephedra sinica	H1N1 virus infected mice	Lactobacillales, Bifidobacteriaceae↑	SCFAs↑	Significantly treats acute lung injury caused by H1N1	Regulate the type of bacteria and metabolites and inhibit the release of inflammatory factors	(Xiaoting et al., 2020)

↓ refers to decline, ↑ refers to increase, — refers to no effect.