Wu Yiling： Opening up a New Situation of Prevention and Treatment of Microangiopathy

Cctv news(Reporter Dong Shuyun): On January 10th, the National Science and Technology Awards Conference was grandly held in the Great Hall of the People. The project "Construction of the Theory of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Its Guidance for the Prevention and Treatment of Microangiopathy" led by Wu Yiling, an academician of China Academy of Engineering, won the first prize of the National Science and Technology Progress Award. It is reported that the award is the only first prize of the National Science and Technology Progress Award in the medical field in 2019.

As a contemporary of the Republic, Wu Yiling has multiple identities such as doctor, academician and entrepreneur. Referring to these names, he smiled indifferently and said, "I am a doctor."

Wu Yiling (Photo courtesy of the respondent)

Born into a family of traditional Chinese medicine, he devoted himself to the research of traditional Chinese medicine for 40 years.

The Wu family practiced medicine for several generations, and Wu Yiling’s father was very famous in his hometown in Hebei Province at that time. He accumulated a lot of Chinese medicine classics at home, and Wu Yiling read Huangdi Neijing and Treatise on Febrile Diseases almost every time.

In 1977, Wu Yiling was admitted to the Department of Traditional Chinese Medicine of Hebei Medical University (then Hebei New Medical University). In the second year, the whole country resumed recruiting graduate students. The class teacher encouraged him to apply for the exam because of his solid basic skills. With years of accumulation, Wu Yiling completed the five-year college course in only three months. In 1979, he was admitted as the first graduate student of cardiovascular and diabetes in Nanjing College of Traditional Chinese Medicine.

During his three years as a graduate student in Wu Yiling, he began to get involved in the subject of collateral diseases. After graduation, he returned to work in the Cardiovascular Department of Hebei Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital, and during this period, he began to explore different ways to treat cardiovascular diseases, and also innovatively developed prescriptions for treating cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases.

Wu Yiling (left) Visiting Data Map

"Chinese medicine has been circulating for thousands of years, and it is profound, but our understanding of it is not deep enough." Wu Yiling said with deep feelings that as a doctor, he has the responsibility to promote Chinese medicine to keep pace with the times and further develop it.

Guided by the theory of venation, a new understanding of microangiopathy

China Cardiovascular Report 2018 shows that there are about 290 million patients with cardiovascular diseases in China, and one person dies of cardiovascular diseases every 10 seconds, and the mortality rate of cardiovascular diseases still ranks first. Microangiopathy is considered to be the key factor to improve the clinical efficacy of the above diseases, but due to its unclear mechanism and uncertain curative effect, scholars at home and abroad have never made a breakthrough for many years.

Wu Yiling and his team have made great innovations in the academic theory of traditional Chinese medicine, focusing on the international problem of microangiopathy and combining the major diseases of heart, brain and sugar.

The Wu Yiling team project won the first prize of the National Science and Technology Progress Award (Photo courtesy of the interviewee)

Since 2005, Wu Yiling led the scientific research team to build the theory of TCM veins for the first time, relying on two national key basic research and development plans (referred to as "973 Plan") and combining with more than 10 domestic colleges and universities.

"&lsquo in the context theory; Pulse ’ Chinese medicine is called blood vessel, which is actually the same thing as the blood vessel of western medicine in anatomy, and the vein is the branch of blood vessel, "Wu Yiling said. The research team has carried out a lot of experiments in more than ten years, and under the guidance of venation theory, they have a new understanding of microvascular diseases.

"Microvessels, including microcirculatory lesions, are a difficult problem in the international medical community. They not only play an important role in the occurrence and development of major diseases such as cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases and diabetes, but also are the key factors that are difficult to improve the clinical efficacy at present. We have carried out research from three aspects: Chinese medicine, academic theory and mechanism of action. "

The research team adopted a randomized, double-blind, multicenter, placebo-controlled clinical evidence-based medicine that fully met international standards, and analyzed more than 33,000 research data, revealing that microangiopathy is a core and starting factor, including microvascular endothelial cells. Protecting microvascular endothelial cells is the key mechanism for treating clinical cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases.

Wu Yiling (left) video screenshot

Wu Yiling said, "Around such an innovative theory, we adopted three traditional Chinese medicines for dredging collaterals and treating cardiovascular diseases". Clinical studies have confirmed that these drugs have great advantages in protecting microvessels and improving microcirculation.

Among them, the evidence-based study of Tongxinluo capsule in the treatment of acute myocardial infarction without reflow confirmed that it can reduce the area of myocardial infarction, improve cardiac function, and improve the curative effect by 20%, which has made great progress in solving this problem in the international cardiovascular community.

However, for Wu Yiling, the integration of Chinese and Western medicine and the real "going out" of Chinese medicine are his constant pursuit and efforts. Wu Yiling sighed, "The mechanism of Chinese medicine can be clearly explained, and Chinese medicine can be widely recognized by the world, so we can be worthy of this quintessence."