United Press International - Friday, 1 December 2000
Calum Macleod

And that's unless Chinese doctors work a miracle with ginseng and mulberry bark.

"Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has a very important role to play in treating AIDS," says Professor Guang Chongfen, Director of Immunology at the China Academy of TCM in Beijing. Researchers like Professor Guang are increasingly convinced their ancient art holds the answers in the global quest to find a cure for the deadly virus.

Results to date are certainly encouraging. Professor Guang's team has been conducting clinical trials in Tanzania since 1989. In the most complete experiment that concluded last year, 14 of 29 AIDS patients responded positively to treatment with 'Zhongyan Erhao', a compound of eight different TCM compounds including ginseng.

Professor Luo Shide of the Kunming Plant Research Institute, under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, boasts an even higher success rate for his Compound SH drug.

After sifting though over 1,000 medicinal herbs since 1985, Luo selected the bark of white mulberry root and four other Chinese plants. "This year we tested SH on 28 patients in Thailand," Luo told United Press International. "Nine of them showed obvious reductions in viral concentration, while 16 others showed no increase after three months treatment. The Thai Ministry of Health confirmed an effectiveness ratio of 89 percent."

As Third World countries bemoan the prohibitive cost of western AIDS medicines, the Chinese discoveries offer real hope of affordable care.

"There is no vaccine for AIDS," says Guang, "and no compound can cure it yet, but Chinese medicines can inhibit the growth of the virus and improve patients' immunity. Although TCM is slower to act than western medicine like DDI and AZT, it offers longer-lasting results, with no side-effects or resistance, and, above all, it is cheap, costing just a few yuan compared to hundreds of dollars for DDI and AZT."

The biggest challenge, predictably, is funding. Traditional Chinese mentality dominates public opinion and expenditure on sexual matters in the PRC.

"There is so much discrimination in society towards AIDS sufferers that people are afraid to admit they have the disease," says Guang. "This means no one knows exactly how many people have AIDS in China, and this influences how much funding the government gives."

Official statistics suggest there are only 20,000 registered cases of HIV in China. Unofficially, the government accepts that there are at least 500,000 to one million cases, and the number is climbing by over 30 percent per year. Yet Professor Guang has found it impossible to persuade patients to come forward to participate in trials inside China. "I must do clinical research here in Beijing. There are physical differences between black and yellow-skinned people."

Guang's team soon exhausted the 400,000 yuan government grant received during the PRC's Ninth Five Year Plan (1996-2000). Each monkey she uses for experiments costs 3,000 yuan, and her team has been though over 70 so far. Guang has applied for 1 million yuan in the upcoming 10th Five Year Plan period (2001-2005), but she realizes her institute still needs 500,000 yuan more from a private sponsor, ideally a Chinese or foreign pharmaceutical firm.

Luo Shide also is desperate for additional funding, as he plans a crucial third stage of clinical trials in Thailand involving up to 300 AIDS patients. While his base in southwest Yunnan province, a hotbed of drug trafficking from the Golden Triangle, provides more willing candidates for local trials than the Chinese capital, Luo is prevented from experimenting by a bureaucratic turf war: His institute is not part of China's Ministry of Health's 'system'.

"In Thailand, our trials are conducted according to US standards, so we hope to get international verification," says Luo. "If the trials go well, we could apply for approval and begin production by mid-2001."

That may be an overly optimistic assessment. New drugs commonly take ten years to pass tests in the west, and Guang suspects approval of her 'Zhongyan Erhao' also will take a decade.

Yet both researchers hold out hope that TCM promises major breakthroughs in the war on AIDS.

"It will take time but the best way is to combine the advantages of both western and Chinese medicine," says Guang. "Whether you experiment on people or monkeys, if a medicine has a 50 percent success rate then it has a future and trials must continue."
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