Flu best treated with combined Chinese and Western medicine, metabonomics study shows

A metabonomics study of patients suffering from the H1N1 strain of flu identified several disease biomarkers in serum and showed that a combination of Chinese and western medicine provided the best treatment, say Chinese researchers. Writing in Talanta, they pointed out that "although several biomarkers can accurately diagnose patients with pandemic influenza, there is no report showing the change in metabolism of patients infected by H1N1 virus after treatment."

So, they used LC/MS with electrospray ionisation on a time-of-flight mass spectrometer to analyse the serum of 131 H1N1 sufferers before and after treatment then analysed the data by partial least squares-discriminant analysis. After successful treatment, levels of methylxanthine and cysteinyl leukotrienes were markedly changed, so these metabolites could be used as markers to show that the treatment is working.

The largest changes in these biomarker concentrations were found after a joint treatment regime involving traditional Chinese medicine and western-style medicine. The importance of the arachidonic acid pathway in treatment of the H1N1 virus was demonstrated.