Advances in traditional Chinese medicine for cardiovascular disease therapy in 2020

Abstract

Cardiovascular diseases are a major cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide and there is an urgent need to develop new pharmacotherapies for managing cardiovascular diseases. In China, traditional Chinese medicine has been used in clinical settings for thousands of years. Although traditional Chinese medicine is very popular, Western medicine experts have not yet accepted it because some ingredients and mechanisms of action for its therapeutic effect are not fully clear. Emerging evidence has established that traditional Chinese medicine inhibits oxidative stress and inflammatory response, suppresses apoptosis, promotes angiogenesis, regulates autophagy and gut microbiota, and modulates metabolomics, among others. Therefore, it has a beneficial role against cardiovascular disease occurrence and progression, such as atherosclerosis, hypertension, myocardial ischemia/reperfusion injury, myocardial infarction, cardiomyopathy, arrhythmia, cardiac remodeling, pulmonary arterial hypertension, and heart failure. In this review, we have summarized the research progress on the relevant mechanisms by which traditional Chinese medicine regulates cardiovascular diseases in 2020 to reveal its application to cardiovascular disease prevention and/or therapy.