Kugan

Kugan (苦甘颗粒) is a traditional Chinese medicine formulated as granules with a deep brown color and a sweet, slightly bitter taste. It is composed of nine herbal ingredients including Ephedra (mahuang), mint (bohe), cicada slough (chan tui), honeysuckle flower (jinyinhua), scutellaria root (huangqin), bitter apricot seed (kuxingren), balloon flower root (jie geng), fritillaria bulb from Zhejiang province (zhe bei mu), and licorice root (gancao). The excipients include sucrose and dextrin. The drug functions to dispel wind-heat, clear heat, promote lung function to resolve phlegm, relieve cough, and ease asthma symptoms. It is primarily indicated for wind-heat common cold and warm-wind lung-heat syndromes characterized by chills with fever, headache, sore throat, cough with sputum production, and wheezing. It can also be used for upper respiratory tract infections such as influenza and acute tracheobronchitis presenting these symptoms. Mechanistically it acts through the combined effects of its herbal components which have properties such as sweating induction to disperse cold by Ephedra; cooling heat by mint; anti-inflammatory effects from honeysuckle; expectorant action from fritillaria; antitussive effects from bitter apricot seed; among others. However detailed molecular targets or receptor interactions are not well defined in Western pharmacology terms.

Brand names

Kugan苦甘颗粒

Other names

苦甘冲剂