The objective of the paper is to study the effect of TCD Qi-supplementing and blood-stasis-removing prescription (QBP) on
the biological function of in-vitro cultivated rat cervical
intervertebral disk
chondrocytes. Seventy healthy SD rats with body weight: 200±50g and aged 10 months (males and females half each) were randomly divided into five groups (n=14 each): Group I as the blank treated by normal saline, Group II as the control treated by Fenbid, Group III treated by low-dose QBP, Group IV treated by middle-dose QBP, Group V treated by high-dose QBP; the administration was both quantitative and regular and lasted four days; four days later, the serums of each group were taken and, under the same conditions, made into the QBP-containing and the control serum, in which the rat cervical intervertebral disk chondrocytes were cultivated in vitro; the growth and proliferation of the chondrocytes were observed with MTT method; and the cellular withering rate was detected with a flow cytometer. The results showed that all of three doses of QBP functioned to promote the growth and proliferation of the chondrocytes cultured in vitro; the high dose (that is, 10 %-QBP-serum) had the greatest function in the three doses with a significant difference from other groups (P < 0.01); the cell cycle analysis showed that QBP could promote the cell DNA synthesis with a very significant difference from the control group (P < 0.01), suggesting that QBP functions to promote the growth, proliferation and DNA synthesis of rat cervical intervertebral disk chondrocytes.