The Anti-Cancer Effects of San Ye Qing (Tetrastigma hemsleyanum)
San Ye Qing (Tetrastigma hemsleyanum Diels et Gilg, family Vitaceae, genus Tetrastigma) is an anti-cancer herb commonly used in the folk medicine of Zhejiang. The whole plant can be used as medicine, but the underground tuber is the most effective. TCM holds that San Ye Qing clears heat and resolves toxin, activates blood and dissipates nodules, expels wind and resolves phlegm, and regulates qi and strengthens the spleen. It is also a common herb of the Yao people, who use it mainly for stones—gallstones, kidney stones, and ureteral stones.
Modern pharmacological research has found that besides its anti-cancer action, San Ye Qing also has anti-inflammatory and analgesic effects, and can be used in treating infectious diseases such as infantile convulsion with high fever, dysentery, bronchitis, pneumonia, pharyngitis, hepatitis, viral meningitis, tonsillitis, and cellulitis. It can also be used for traumatic injuries and venomous snake bites.
San Ye Qing has a broad-spectrum anti-cancer effect. In Zhejiang and elsewhere, folk and TCM circles use it to treat esophageal cancer, gastric cancer, lung cancer, liver cancer, pancreatic cancer, breast cancer, cervical cancer, leukemia, ovarian cancer, bladder cancer, prostate cancer, and other cancers.
Because San Ye Qing is widely used in Zhejiang folk medicine against cancer, the Zhejiang Provincial Administration of TCM once organized experts to conduct a dedicated study of its anti-cancer effects and mechanisms. The Nanjing Institute of Public Preventive Medicine and the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Sciences, also conducted specialized studies on its anti-cancer mechanism. These institutions found that San Ye Qing promotes apoptosis of cancer cells, possibly because its ethyl acetate fraction blocks the tumor-cell proliferation cycle. They also found that San Ye Qing enhances the phagocytic capacity of mononuclear phagocytes and macrophages, boosting human immunity.
San Ye Qing also has some analgesic action. Folk medicine in Zhejiang and Guizhou uses it as a painkiller; scholars have reported its adjunctive value in late-stage cancer pain. It helps improve patients' appetite, so it is often used for chemo- and radiotherapy patients with reduced appetite. Because it also has some diuretic effect, it can be used as adjunctive treatment for ascites.
Contemporary Zhejiang TCM physicians are very fond of using San Ye Qing against cancer; it appears in the prescriptions of most Zhejiang TCM doctors. The Zhejiang cancer patients I meet are often told by local elders that they can decoct San Ye Qing in water. Some patients from poor families, having given up formal treatment, even dig San Ye Qing themselves to fight cancer. But at present, patients treated with San Ye Qing alone rarely achieve effective tumor control, so while using it, patients had best combine it with other anti-cancer measures.
The usual adult dose of dried San Ye Qing is 10–30 g; the fresh herb may be doubled. It is decocted in water or cooked together with other Chinese medicines. San Ye Qing has very few side effects, and no serious adverse reactions have been reported so far; the few Zhejiang patients I have met who took it long term showed no obvious side effects.