HKBU and CUHK Award-winning Chinese Medicine Collaboration for IBS

Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) is one of the most common functional gastrointestinal disorders in clinical practice in Hong Kong. IBS affects patients daily life as they usually have symptoms of abdominal pain or discomfort associated with a change in stool consistency or frequency. There are currently no therapies or drugs with positive efficacy in treating IBS from the Western medicine perspective. The conventional treatments target only symptoms and some of the drugs commonly used to treat IBS are also associated with strong side effects.

Prof Bian Zhaoxiang and his research team from the School of Chinese Medicine collaborated with the Faculty of Medicine of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) to conduct a research on the feasibility of treating IBS with traditional Chinese herbal medicine. The research group demonstrated that the invented composition of Chinese medicine is effective in curing visceral pain, torso pain and diarrhoea. Through clinical studies, they showed that the patient symptoms were improved after taking the medicine for just eight consecutive weeks. Even when the patients stopped taking it for two months, there was no recurrence of symptoms. This is unlike Western medicine treatment that has a relatively high recurrence rate.

The patent rights are exclusively licensed to a Hong Kong Stock Exchange listed company, PuraPharm Corporation Limited (HKSX: 1498). The company has been carrying out large-scale clinical trials under CFDA in Mainland China. The invention was awarded a gold medal with distinction and an Award of Excellence from Romania at the 46th International Exhibition of Inventions, Geneva.