Abstract :
Recently, an article by a Danish doctor, titled “Chinese herbal remedy found to contain steroids and antifungals” was published in the journal Lancet [1]. He described a patient with earlyonset guttate psoriasis who had been prescribed the Chinese herbal ointment Shenfucao by a doctor in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). The Danish doctor suspected that the ointment contained hormones. Subsequently, he sent Shenfucao to Sweden for testing and found that it contained clobetasol propionate and antifungal drugs including ketoconazole and miconazole. However, these ingredients were not mentioned on the drug label. In addition, according to the financial channel of China Central Television, in April 2018, an old Chinese doctor in Changzhou, Jiangsu province, China, claimed to have an ancestral ointment recipe that produced immediate effects. However, the test results showed that the ointments contained western medicine ingredients, along with prohibited ingredients, such as morphine.
