Major diseases cause a double blow to patients' physical and mental health and family life and pose a great challenge to the healthcare system. The high incidence of major diseases compels us to constantly improve the medical prevention and treatment system to reduce disability and death rates as much as possible. Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has been widely used in the treatment of malignancies and cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases such as myocardial infarction and stroke, in the rehabilitation of patients with these diseases, as well as in the prevention and treatment of new outbreaks of infectious diseases and other major illnesses. After the coronavirus disease 2019 outbreak, the clinical application of “three prescriptions and three drugs” has greatly increased the cure rate, reduced the mortality rate, and provided a “Chinese solution” for global epidemic prevention and control. This article reviewed the clinical evidence and mechanisms of action of TCM in the prevention and treatment of major diseases, summarized the advances, and proposed future research directions to provide scientific evidence to expand the clinical application of TCM and improve its efficacy for the benefit of all humankind.

Coronaviruses (CoVs), a family of enveloped positive-sense RNA viruses, are characterized by club-like spikes that project from their surface, unusually large RNA genome, and unique replication capability. CoVs are known to cause various potentially lethal human respiratory infectious diseases, such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), and the very recent coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak. Unfortunately, neither drug nor vaccine has yet been approved to date to prevent and treat these diseases caused by CoVs. Therefore, effective prevention and treatment medications against human coronavirus are in urgent need. In the past decades, many natural compounds have been reported to possess multiple biological activities, including antiviral properties. In this article, we provided a comprehensive review on the natural compounds that interfere with the life cycles of SARS and MERS, and discussed their potential use for the treatment of COVID-19.

Objective To determine the contents of scutellarin and chlorogenic acid in Qingkailing extract by HPLC.Methods Kromasil C18 column was adopted and the mobile phase consisted of methnol-water-phosphoric acid (20 ∶80 ∶0.2) with the flow rate being 1.0 mL?min-1 and column temperature being 25 ℃.The detection wavelength was 327 nm.Results The linearity of scutellarin was good in the range of 0.090～0.540 ?g,r=0.999 9,and its average recovery rate was 100.3 %(RSD=0.99 %);the linearity of chlorogenic acid was good in the range of 0.196～1.176 ?g,r=0.999 9,and its average recovery rate was 99.9 %(RSD=1.06 %).Conclusion This method is sensitive,simple,accurate,and can be used for the quality control of Qingkailing extract.