In recent years, the morbidity of fatty liver is increasing. Chinese and western medicines to cure fatty liver have come one after another. Therefore, it is of primary importance to select medicines that can both lower serum lipid levels and protect the liver from diseases. From June of 1997 to December of 1999, we employed Xuezhikang capsule to treat 41 fatty liver patients so as to observe its various curative effects. The detail of the study is in the following.

PATIENTS AND METHODS

Subjects
41 in- and out-patients suffering fatty liver at different degree of the hospital were selected as, 27 men, 14 women, aging from 31 to 76 years old with the average 43.76. They met the diagnose criteria of fatty liver in B-Mode Ultrasonogram check and divided into three categories: slight, moderate and severe. [1] Among them, 21 cases suffered slight fatty liver symptom, 17 moderate and 3 severe. There were 39 patients (95%) associated with no appetite, abdominal distention and liver dull pain, 24 cases (58%) of overweight, 8 cases (20%) of long-term alcohol addiction and 9 cases (21%) of diabetes II. Patients with hyperlipoidemia resulted from renal, endocrine or medicines were excluded from the trial.

Methods
1. Oral administration of 0.6 g Xuezhikang (0.3 g per capsule) each time, twice a day after meal. One period lasted for 8 weeks and the trial was carried out for 3 periods.
2. Before, after the treatment, fast blood samples were taken in every period to determine the concentrations of ALT, AST, TG, TC, LDL-C and HDL-C. At the same time, employing Hewlett Packard?8500 and B-Mode Ultrasonic tip 3.5 MHz to examine liver conditions and recorded clinical changes.
3. Statistical Processing
Data was expressed in the form of means ± standard deviation ( X ± s). And t-test was utilized for data comparison.


RESULTS

All symptoms changed after the treatment. It was found that some improvement occurred after 1 period and dramatic improvement happened after patients got 3 treatment periods. See Table 1.

The changes of biochemical indexes after the treatment were listed in Table 2.
It could be seen that after the Xuezhikang treatment, the concentrations of TC, TG, LDL-C reduced significantly and HDL-C level increased dramatically (P < 0.01). ALT and AST also obtained a distinct reduction (P < 0.001). And the statistical difference was significant.

B-Mode ultrosonogram change was given in Table III. It could be seen that there was significant changes of B-Mode ultrosonogram after the treatment. treatme

Xuezhikang capsule, developed and manufactured by Beijing WBL Peking University Biotech Co., Ltd., is a pure natural medicine made up of and refined from (Monascus purpureus) red yeast rice. One of its major active ingredients is Lovastatin being a kind of HMG-CoA reductase inhibitor that can directly reduce the synthesis of cholesterol. By increasing LDL-C receptor, it can also promote cholesterol metabolism, reduce serum TC and LDL-C concentration, inhibit the synthesis of fatty acids and TG, dramatically raise HDL-C level and improve or regulate disorders of lipid metabolic process. In addition, Xuezhikang also contains many kinds of necessary amino acids and unsaturated fatty acids that can protect liver from getting disease and enhance fat transfer. [2] Studies show that Xuezhikang could decrease liver coefficient (liver weight/body weight) of exogenous hyperlipoidemia rabbit and alleviate histomorphological changes of liver. Thus, it is considered that Xuezhikang can inhibit lipid deposition in liver. [3] At present, there is very little literature on clinical observation of the effects of Xuezhikang on fatty liver, in this study, we treat 41 patients with Xuezhikang for 6 months. The findings indicate that Xuezhikang possesses very significant performance in lowering the concentrations of TC, TG and LDL-C and raising HDL-C level. It also achieves clear effects on serum ALT and AST reduction. Meanwhile, it significantly alleviates clinical symptoms and B-Mode ultrosonogram of such patients. 6-month clinical applications without any obvious side-effect strongly supports previous viewpoint and indicates that Xuezhikang is an ideal and effective medicine to treat fatty liver.

REFERENCES