| Summary: | This paper is a literature review to present current studies on the treatment of Diabetic Nephropathy (DN) using integrated Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and Western Medicine (WM) treatment in China. It includes an illustration of the study design, types of treatment applied, outcome measures and effectiveness of the treatment. In doing so, it is possible to learn from the collective experience and success of practitioners in China on the treatment of DN using both TCM and WM. Methods A literature search was carried out on Wanfang Database (万方数据) for the period 2004-2007 using the terms Diabetic Nephropathy (糖尿病肾病) and Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine (中西医结合). The keywords and all the articles searched were all in Chinese language. Results The search yielded 252 published articles. However, only 32 articles met the inclusion criteria for review. All studies showed that an integrated TCM and WM treatment for DN is more effective than a single WM treatment. Conclusion This review had provided us with a new insight to how integrated treatment of Chinese and Western medicine could help relieve the symptoms of DN patient such as decrease urinary proteins, improve renal function and lower high blood pressure, showing a better therapeutic effect than that only with western drugs.
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