Decade Research Progress and Development Trend of Complex Prescription Compatibility of Traditional Chinese Medicine

Complex prescription is the primary therapeutic method of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). It is a key influencing factor in prescription compatibility. During the past decade, researchers have carried out explorations on the compound compatibility law through aspects of pharmacodynamics (PD), pharmacokinetics (PK) and the combination of PD and PK (PD-PK) and achieved significant success. However, a TCM prescription contains various components. The functions of components and the complex interactions among the different components and their metabolic changes in the body have not been well understood. By far, reasonable and standard methods are still lacking in the study of component compatibility of TCM complex prescription. Based on a summary of recent studies of complex prescription, we put forward the new research method of complex prescription compatibility through multi-index comprehensive evaluation for PD-PK indexes of the efficacious components compatibility law.