Journal of Gastrointestinal & Digestive System
Open Access

Abstract

With a continual growth of the pharmacutical market throughout the last decade to a gross worth of 900 billion in 2008, it was important to recognize the herbal medication industry which shared about $62 billion of that growth and continuing to show stable evolution potential of 5-15% per annum. According to a study conducted in the United States and Europe; two-thirds of the population are using one or more of the alternative therapeutic approaches, hence pharmaceutical companies have renewed their strategies in favor of natural product drug development and discovery. In Asia and Malaysia there has been an increased number of traditional medicine practicioners, and due to the wide mixture of races and customs we can find a varied scope of Chinese, Malay and Indian medical practices, most of them using medications that were extracted from herbs and fruits that can be found and harvested locally, among these is Xiang Sha Yang Wei Wan. Xiang Sha Yang Wei Wan (XSYWW) is a Chinese traditional medicine that?s used for gastrointestinal disorders specifically gastric ulcer in many countries of south-east Asia. The aim of the study was to evaluate the curative and prophylactic potentials of XSYWW on ethanol-induced gastric ulcer in rats by means of histological study. Similarly, ranitidine was used as a conventional standard medication for comparison purpose. Scanning electron microscopes as well as light microscope images that were used to follow up the test subjects and the progression as well as the efficacy of the treatment throughout the study showed that XSYWW has protective and therapeutic effects against ethanol-induced gastric mucosal lesion. However, there was a faster and better healing process in the ranitidine treated groups.

Biography