Conclusion: Therapy with TCM has several advantages. It is effective and shows excellent safety in most patients with psoriasis. Remission seems to be long lasting. In addition, treatment with TCM is less costly for the patient when compared with narrow-band UVB, psoralen plus UVA (PUVA), retinoids, ciclosporin, alefacept, and other new biologic agents.

Patients with psoriasis were divided into three groups according to their clinical course: developing stage, stable stage, and remission stage. Three different prescriptions, called recipes 1, 2, and 3, were given to the three different groups, respectively. Recipe 1 mainly consisted of buffalo horn, spreading Hedyotis herb, Chinese corktree bark, and sinking Arnebia root; recipe 2 mainly consisted of dan-shen root, zedoary, oyster shell, and figwort root; and recipe 3 mainly consisted of Rehmannia dried rhizome, tuber fleeceflower root, Chinese angelica, and suberect Spatholobus stem. These TCM agents were taken by patients with psoriasis once daily, with no other systemic drug, but accompanied by topical urea cream; treatment was continued for at least 1 month.
Excellent results were observed after 1 month of treatment with TCM agents. Twenty-six of 72 treated patients (36.1%) achieved greater than a 75% reduction in the Psoriasis Activity and Severity Index (PASI) score and 38 patients (52.8%) achieved more than 50%, but less than 75%, improvement in the PASI score. No severe side-effects were observed, but slight nausea developed in five patients after taking TCM.