Safety and efficacy assessment of Chungpyesagan-tang for acute ischemic stroke

Chungpyesagan-tang is one of the most well-known traditional herbal formulations frequently used for treatment of acute stroke in Korea. Therefore, this study aims to assess the clinical safety and efficacy of Chungpyesagan-tang on acute ischemic stroke. We recruited acute cerebral infarction subjects within 1 week after onset time. Then, we prescribed Chungpyesagan-tang to an Oriental medical treatment group (OM-group) for 2 weeks and enrolled a Western medical treatment group (WM-group) which received only Western biomedical care as a control. In this study, the OM-group was composed of 75 subjects. However, 14 of them dropped out, as two had progressive stroke while 12 complained of diarrhea. Thus, 61 cases were included in the analysis and compared to the 76 cases of the WM-group. The improvement of OM-group was better than that of the WM-group according to the National Institute of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS), but not by the Modified Barthel Index (MBI). There were no definite abnormalities on laboratory safety assessment. Therefore, we suggest that Chungpyesagan-tang may have therapeutic effects, acting to reduce the severity of stroke and improving functional recovery without definite hepatic or renal toxicity when given for the first 2 weeks after a stroke.