Contemporary Western medicines approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of chronic hepatitis B (CHB)

although available in China

have high costs

or major side effects and limited effectiveness. Research efforts have focused on looking for natural products as alternative medicines with low cost and good safety for CHB treatment. Chinese medicine (CM) has ancient

time-honored theories about methods of diagnosis and treatment for liver diseases. In recent decades

a large number of clinical trials and pre-clinical studies

which were performed in China and other countries

indicated that CM has potential benefit in several aspects of the treatment of CHB

e.g.

anti-inflammatory

anticancer

antioxidant

immunomodulating

antifibrosis

and antiviral. However

there are many concerns regarding the study design and the quality of clinical trials. Further larger

stringently designed

double-blind

placebo control

randomized clinical trials and long-term follow-up are needed to provide conclusive evidence of their efficacy and safety. Components of CM deserve further study in pre-clinical models of HBV infection and in clinical trials world-wide.