A Review Study on the Treatment of Eating Disorder in Traditional Chinese Medicine

Objectives: This study was performed to review the research trends in the treatment of eating disorder in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM).Methods: The CNKI database (China National Knowledge Infrastructure) was searched under the key words ‘Eating Disorder’, ‘Anorexia Nervosa’, and ‘Bulimia Nervosa’.Results: Thirteen articles were selected. These included 2 studies on bulimia nervosa, and 11 studies on anorexia nervosa. According to study design, studies were classified into 1 randomized controlled trial, 2 single group before-and-after studies, and 8 case reports. According to therapy method, they in-cluded 11 herbal medicine studies, and 2 complex treatment studies. The most common pattern identi-fication was ‘liver qi depression’ ( 肝氣鬱結), and the most used herb was ‘Root of Bupleurum falca-tum’ (柴胡). Most of the studies showed effective results.Conclusions: The results of our study indicated that TCM clinical studies on eating disorder were being conducted more actively than in Korean medicine. Korean medical treatment might be effective to re-lieve eating disorder symptoms. In the future, more scientifically designed clinical studies should be performed to prove the effectiveness of traditional Korean medicine treatment on eating disorder.Key Words: Eating Disorder, Anorexia Nervosa, Bulimia Nervosa, Traditional Chinese Medicine.