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Although modern medicine is established in Asia, traditional medicine also plays a big role in people's healthcare — and is gaining in popularity in other countries too.
To investigate traditional Asian medicines properly, we need to rethink the way they are tested, say Liang Liu, Elaine Lai-Han Leung and Xiaoying Tian.
The editor of Nature China reports on his first visit to a traditional Chinese medicine practitioner to find out how this ancient practice is dispensed in the twenty-first century — and to see if anything can be done to relieve his back pain.
Many ingredients in traditional herbal medicines cannot be absorbed by the human gut. Could our microbial inhabitants do for us what we can't do ourselves?
The concepts of Asia's traditional medicines might sound alien to Western ears, but some of them are starting to evolve to fit scientific investigation.
The repertoire of traditional Chinese medicine could offer rich pickings for modern drug developers, but researchers must first define and test herbal concoctions.
Identifying the patients most likely to progress from a precancerous condition to multiple myeloma could help doctors catch the disease early and stop it taking hold.
Drugs introduced to fight multiple myeloma in the past decade have revolutionized treatment and extended patients' lives. Are the improvements set to continue?