Zhejiang University of Traditional Chinese Medicine Experimental Animal Center has a group of mice, in the eyes of Dr. Wang Xinchang, deputy director of the Department of Rheumatology and Immunology at Xinhua Hospital, these mice are like their own children: they live in a 100,000-class clean cabin with central air conditioning, and several doctoral students are dedicated to wait on them every day. What mice are so valuable? Dr. Xinchang Wang said that these mice are the ones who help us overcome medical problems and bring good news to SLE patients. The research on the effect of combining Chinese and Western medicine in the treatment of SLE, led by Professor Fan Yongsheng of Zhejiang University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, won the first prize of Science and Technology Progress of Zhejiang Provincial Government in 2007, and successfully transferred the scientific and technological achievements to clinical treatment to serve patients with good results. At the Science and Technology Conference held recently at the provincial Xinhua Hospital, the hospital rewards a number of medical personnel who have made outstanding contributions to scientific and technological innovation. Professor Fan Yongsheng said that SLE is a typical refractory autoimmune disease. At present, hormones and immunosuppressants are most used in Western medicine, which are effective but have many toxic side effects and high recurrence rate, and are prone to secondary infections, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, peptic ulcers, osteoporosis and femoral head necrosis. Since the vast majority of SLE patients need lifelong treatment, it often causes damage to multiple organs and systems and loss of labor force in the later stage, which brings a great burden to both families and society. However, so far, hormones and immunosuppressants are still a basic drug for the treatment of SLE. How can we reduce the adverse effects of hormones and improve the therapeutic effect of lupus erythematosus to achieve the effect of “reducing toxicity and increasing effectiveness”? Professor Fan Yongsheng of Zhejiang University of Traditional Chinese Medicine led the research on the effect of combining Chinese and Western medicine in the treatment of SLE, and these mice are the animal models that contributed their lives to the subject. Dr. Xinchang Wang said that the mice, scientifically named MRL/lpr mice, were successfully bred by two American scientists in a U.S. laboratory in 1978. “These mice were produced from several different strains of mice through a complex series of crosses up to the 12th generation. The mice have symptoms similar to those of human lupus erythematosus, including significant serum autoantibodies, immune complex glomerulonephritis, and vasculitis.” In clinical practice, Prof. Fan Yongsheng has summarized a set of detoxification and de-stagnation methods for lupus erythematosus patients to nourish Yin. But how can this set of methods achieve detoxification and de-stagnation? In order to understand it mechanically, it is necessary to test it on animals (the symptoms of these white rats are the same as those of lupus patients), and this method is feasible in animals, so that lupus patients can also use it, so that this method can be better promoted in reality. At present, this research result has been promoted and applied in the rheumatology departments of general hospitals in several provinces in China.