A Current Update on the Rule of Alternative and Complementary Medicine in the Treatment of Liver Diseases

Table 1

Treatments of various liver diseases provided by first line clinical treatment in contrast to alternative treatment.

Diseases/stages/conditions	First line treatment/conventional treatment	Complementary and alternative medicine	Mechanism
Alcoholic liver diseases	Nutritional therapy, maybe parenteral [14, 15]	Enteral nutritional supplementation [14, 15]	Combating malnutrition
Autoimmune liver diseases	Prednisone alone or with azathioprine [16, 17]	Curcumin [18–20]	Modulating biological activity of signaling molecules
Cirrhosis	Surgery/transjugular intrahepatic portosystemic shunts [21, 22]	Silymarin [23], Yinchenhao Tang, and Xaiocaihu Tang [24]	Hepatoprotective, directly affecting hepatitis virus
Congenital liver diseases	Combined surgery or hybrid operation [25], gene therapy [26]	Huangqi tang [24], the Kuhuang injection [27]	Hepatoprotective, relieving jaundice
Infectious liver diseases	Antimicrobial agents, invasive [7, 28, 29]	Probiotics, silymarin [30, 31]	Anti-inflammatory and selective antimicrobial effects
Intoxicated liver diseases	Chelation therapy, supportive care [32, 33]	Essential phospholipids from soybean [34]	Detoxification
Metabolic liver diseases	Diet, nutritional supplementation [35]	Glycyrrhizin and matrine [36]	Hepatoprotective and nonspecific anti-inflammatory effect
Space-occupying liver diseases (tumors)	Invasive (surgery, ablation, transplantation) [10, 37, 38]	Phytochemicals, curcumin, emodin, and quercetin [18, 20]	Death receptor pathway, inhibiting DNA repair and apoptosis