The Department of Rheumatology, founded in 1981, is one of the first departments in the country to study rheumatism (Bi Zheng, Arthralgia) as its main direction under the leadership of Zhao Jinduo, Lu Zhizheng, Xie Haizhou and other famous TCM doctors. It established the Rheumatology Branch of the Chinese Association of Chinese Medicine and has promoted the rapid development of TCM rheumatism across the country. It is currently a national key clinical specialty construction unit, a key discipline construction unit of the State Administration of TCM, a national regional TCM (specialty) diagnosis and treatment center and as well as a workstation for master/doctoral and post-doctoral of the China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences.

There are currently 29 staff, including 1 national TCM master of first session, 1 Capital TCM master, 1 National TCM Leader -Qihuang Scholar, 9 chief physicians, 4 associate chief physicians, and more than 70% of them with doctorate. There are 6 doctoral supervisors, 8 master supervisors, 5 doctors who have successively been to the Mayo Medical Center for advanced study and 11 nurses. Our department provides medical services to critical and difficult rheumatism patients across the country with more than 80,000 outpatient visits per year, 22 beds for inpatients, and has trained a large number of TCM professionals in rheumatology for the country.

Through the unremitting efforts of several generations, we have developed integrated therapies by using TCM internal and external methods and western medicine treatment for following diseases: rheumatoid arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis, Sjogren’s syndrome, fibromyalgia, systemic lupus erythematosus, systemic sclerosis, vasculitis, Behcet, gout, and etc., and have also developed herbal preparations such as Fengshian Granules, Niuxi Jianbu Granules, Bushen qiangji Granules, Qingre qiangji Granules, Qingre Huayu Gel and other new herbal medicines.

We have undertaken over 50 scientific research projects of the National Seventh Five-Year Plan, the 11th and 12th Five-Year Science and Technology Support Projects, the 13th Five-Year National Key Research and Development Plan, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Beijing Municipal Natural Science Foundation and projects from academies and institutes. We have led the establishment of the TCM Rheumatism Clinical Data Center, a cohort study of 10,000 rheumatoid arthritis patients, involving more than 100 scientific research units, and formulating industry guidelines and clinical pathways such as the " Diagnosis and Treatment Guideline for the Combination of Diseases and Syndrome of Rheumatoid Arthritis ". We have published several academic monographs, hundreds of academic papers in SCI and core journals, and won the second prize of National Science and Technology Progress Award and the first prize of Science and Technology Award of China Association of Chinese Medicine.