Experimental study on effect of sanchaning in treating primary trigeminal neuralgia

: Sanchaning is an empirial prescription in treating primary trigeminal neuralgia (PTN). Pills of this prescription have been applied to animal models in an experimental study and their effects were compared with that of distilled water as well as carbamazepine, a common Western medicine for curing PTN. The indexes, including the attack number of PTN of the model animals, the duration of the spontaneous reaction and the positive time of the induced response, showed that Sanchaning differed significantly from distilled water in treating PTN (P < 0.01), but slightly differed from that of carbamazepine (P < 0.05). The sequential trial has identified that Sanchaning could be used effectively to inhibit PTN and has the same effect as carbamazepine. But further study should be carried out to investigate the mechanism of its function in relieving PTN.