Tell your healthcare providers about any dietary supplements you’re taking, such as herbs, vitamins, minerals, and natural or home remedies. This will help them manage your care and keep you safe.
Zhi Sou San (ZSS) is a traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) formula. It’s made up of seven different herbs.
Zhi Sou San is used to treat:
Cough
Asthma (condition in which airways swell and narrow making it difficult to breathe)
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (lung disease that makes it hard to breathe)
Talk with your healthcare providers before taking herbal formulas. They can interact with some medications and affect how they work. For more information, read the “What else do I need to know?” section below.
Side effects have not been reported.
For Healthcare Professionals
Zhi Sou San (ZSS) is a traditional Chinese medicine formula with a history of use as a treatment for chronic cough. First described in the classic text, Wan Bing Hui Chun, this formula consists of seven herbs: Platycodon grandiflorum, Schizonepeta, Tatarian Aster root, Stemona root, Willowleaf Swallowwort Rhizome, tangerine peel, and licorice root.
Zhi Sou San is among the commonly used formulas for treating cough (1), asthma (2), and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) (3). Meta-analyses reported it to affect greater improvements in cough and pulmonary function (4) and laryngeal cough (5), with fewer adverse effects and lower recurrence rate compared to conventional treatments (4).
A modified Zhi Sou San formula was also found to be superior to conventional medicine in improving post-infectious cough (6).
Large studies with rigorous methodology are needed to strengthen the current evidence.
Cough
Asthma
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
Zhi Sou San is thought to exert its anti-asthma effects by regulating inflammatory and immune responses involving IL-17, TNF, Toll-like receptor, MAPK, and T-cell receptor signaling pathways, as well as Th17 cell differentiation (7). It was also found to have anti-airway inflammatory effects by inhibiting TRPA1/TRPV1 channels that regulate neuropeptides to alleviate cough hypersensitivity in a murine model with post-infectious cough (8). In another murine study, ZSS improved symptoms of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and lung function (9).
Meng FP, et al. Modern literature research on prescription prescription of Chinese medicine for asthma treatment based on Text Mining. China Journal of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Pharmacy. 2105;10:3490–3493.
Wang Y, et al. Meta-analysis of zhisou powder in the treatment of laryngeal cough. Asia-Pacific Traditional Medicine. 2017;13(2)
Jing J, et al. Zhisou san in treatting cough induced by infections based on randomized clinical trials meta-analysis. Chinese Journal of Experimental Traditional medical Formulae. 2013;19(16):343-348.
