What is lei gong teng? Lei gong teng is a traditional Chinese medicine which can be used for anti-inflammation, kills worms, resolves toxins, treating proteinuric renal disease, used as immunosuppressive agent on autoimmune diseases. Modern applications include proliferative arthritis, inflammation of spinal cord, lupus, purpura, kidney inflammation, asthma, tuberculosis of the lungs, psoriasis, dermatitis and Reiter syndrome.

However, lei gong teng is highly toxic and and large consumption could be toxic to the liver. Toxic reactions include: dizziness, palpitation, weakness, nausea, vomiting, stomach ache, diarrhea, pain in liver and kidney areas, bleeding in the digestive tract, even respiration and circulation exhaustion and death.

Recently, triptolide has also been tested in Phase I clinical trials as an anti-tumour agent.

The study was conducted by a team of researchers led by researcher Dr. Craig Crews at Yale University.

According to the report, during normal kidney development, cells lining the kidney tubules continue growing and dividing until they receive a signal that the tubule is fully formed. The switch that turns on that signal consists of the growth regulatory proteins PKD1 and PKD2, located on hair-like cilia in the lining of the developing tubules. When urine begins flowing through the tubules, the flow bends the cilia that set off the signal that no more growth is needed.

In people who have a mutation in one of these growth regulatory proteins, however, the message to stop growing never gets delivered, even when urine is flowing and the cilia are bending. So, never sensing a signal to stop, the cells lining the fully-formed kidney tubules keep right on subdividing and growing. The result of this hyperproliferative, unregulated growth: uncontrolled growth of cells lining the tubules and the formation of large cysts in the kidneys.