Research overview of ethnic medicines for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis.

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a common clinical autoimmune disease, characterized by persistent synovitis, cartilage destruction and systemic complications, and the incidence of which is increasing every year. The current study found that the characteristics of multi-component, multi-target, and overall regulation of ethnic drugs have significant effects on the prevention and treatment of RA, with less toxicity and side effects. However, there is a lack of comprehensive overview of existing ethnic medicine treatments for RA. This paper summarizes the available ethnomedicines for RA and reviews the current status of research on ethnomedicines against RA, experimental and clinical studies on some common ethnomedicines for RA, and the effects of non-pharmacological treatments on RA. First of all, the search terms "Chinese medicine," "traditional Chinese medicine," "ethnomedicine," "arthritis," "rheumatoid arthritis," "Mongolian medicine," "Zhuang medicine," "Miao medicine" and "Tibetan medicine" were used as search terms to search for relevant literature using Pubmed, China National Knowledge Internet (CNKI) and Wanfang data (1996-2024); secondly, the missing basic information of ethnomedicine collected was supplemented using two databases, namely, Clinical Diagnosis and Treatment Knowledge Base and the Basic Information Base of Chinese Herbal Medicine-Yaozhi data. Among the national medicines for the treatment of RA, the Tibetan medicine, Miao medicine, Zhuang medicine, Mongolian medicine, Dai medicine and Hui medicine are mostly used in the majority of medicinal materials, and the research reports are also in the majority. Other national medicines are also available, but the medicinal materials used are less, the research reports are less, or even not. The treatment of RA, whether experimental or clinical research, is mainly based on compound prescriptions, less use of single herbs, and non-drug therapy. This may provide drug selection and insights for the future experimental and clinical research directions of ethnic drugs widely used in the treatment of RA. Nevertheless, there is still a need for more mechanism research and exploration, as well as pharmacological, toxicological and clinical research on existing or untapped ethnomedicines.