Common Chinese Patent Medicines for Reducing Fever in Children With Cancer: Zixue San and Antelope Horn Oral Liquid

Summer is the season when pediatric patients are most prone to high fever, and children with tumors are even more prone to persistent high fever. Because pediatric patients are especially liable to develop high fever from acute infections, doctors often mistakenly mistake the tumor fever of such children for the high fever caused by pneumonia, encephalitis, and the like.

It is difficult for pediatric patients to take Chinese herbal decoctions, so one should consider using some relatively effective fever-reducing patent medicines in place of the decoction.

Zixue San (Purple Snow Powder) and Lingyangjiao Oral Liquid (Antelope Horn Oral Liquid) are the two patent medicines I recommend for use in summer when pediatric patients present with persistent high fever. They can be used whether the persistent high fever is caused by acute infection or by cancer fever.

If the fever is cancer fever caused by cancer, when using Zixue San and Lingyangjiao Oral Liquid, one may additionally combine them with anticancer, swelling-reducing patent medicines such as Pianzaihuang and Xi Huang pills.

Zixue San is one of the "three treasures" of TCM emergency medicine. In the past it was especially precious because it contained musk, antelope horn, and rhinoceros horn. But today's Zixue San basically uses artificial musk and buffalo horn in place of musk and rhinoceros horn, so it is relatively much cheaper—though its efficacy is also considerably weaker.

The main actions of Zixue San are to clear heat, open the orifices, stop convulsions, and calm the spirit. It is suitable for the TCM patterns of heat entering the pericardium and heat stirring liver wind, presenting with high fever and irritability, coma and delirious speech, macules, spontaneous bleeding and vomiting of blood, dark scanty urine, and constipation.

These symptoms are easily seen not only in children with infectious diseases such as acute pneumonia and encephalitis, but also in children with tumors such as neuroblastoma, leukemia, lymphoma, Ewing's sarcoma, and rhabdomyosarcoma. Zixue San has a fever-reducing effect in both groups of children.

The ingredients of Zixue Shi include gypsum, gypsum fibrosum, talc, magnetite, scrophularia, aucklandia, agarwood, cimicifuga, licorice, clove, mirabilite, nitre, concentrated buffalo-horn powder, antelope horn, artificial musk, and cinnabar.

So overall, this formula of Zixue San is cooling in nature. It must not be taken excessively; once the child's fever has subsided, it should be stopped.

Children with persistent high fever rarely present with what TCM calls a yin pattern. As the famous pediatrician Qian Yi put it, children are constitutionally of pure yang without yin, and a rapid pulse is the basic pulse quality of most children. So when children in oncology develop fever, one must not recklessly use warming herbs; rather, cooling heat-clearing and detoxifying herbs should be the mainstay. Unless there are especially obvious yin-pattern signs, warming herbs of the mahuang-guizhi category must not be abused.

Lingyangjiao Oral Liquid is a patent medicine made solely from antelope horn. TCM holds that antelope horn pacifies the liver and extinguishes wind, clears heat and settles fright, and resolves toxin. It is chiefly used for high-fever diseases with coma and convulsions, delirium and mania, headache and dizziness, convulsive epilepsy, and red eyes with nebular membranes. So Lingyangjiao Oral Liquid is also a very good fever-reducing medicine.

If Zixue San alone is not strong enough to reduce the fever, it can be combined with Lingyangjiao Oral Liquid, or the two can be used alternately. A high fever in a child is often frightening, and many parents panic. While infusing antibiotics can indeed quickly bring the fever down, it also leaves quite a few aftereffects.

And cancer fever, being caused by cancer, cannot be brought down by antibiotics. Using patent medicines rationally to reduce fever can relieve the child's symptoms and ease their suffering.

When a child develops tumor fever, treatment generally calls for heat-clearing and blood-cooling formulas. But in an emergency, first, decocting herbs is inconvenient, and second, many children can hardly swallow a decoction. Readily available patent medicines like Zixue San and Lingyangjiao Oral Liquid can serve an emergency purpose.

Besides using Zixue San and Lingyangjiao Oral Liquid to relieve the high fever, children with cancer also need anticancer, swelling-reducing patent medicines such as Xi Huang pills and Pianzaihuang (I have written before about how to use Xi Huang pills, and I will write about Pianzaihuang when I have time in future), or they should see a TCM doctor who, based on the child's symptoms, will prescribe a heat-clearing, detoxifying, blood-cooling, and swelling-reducing formula to be decocted and taken internally.

Although pediatric tumors are aggressive in onset and progress rapidly, unlike adult tumors they hold out the hope of cure.

If a suitable treatment approach is found and the child's various clinical symptoms are quickly brought under control, as the child's immune system matures, the child's tumor may be conquered by the child's own immune system.

However, medicines like Zixue San, Lingyangjiao Oral Liquid, Pianzaihuang, and Xi Huang pills are all fairly expensive and are not affordable for poor families. If the patient's family is poor, they should seek the help of a clinical TCM doctor to find cheaper herbal decoctions instead.