Adverse drug reactions (ADR) are one important type of safety data for investigational products and post-market drugs. Standardized coding is beneficial to normative ADR analysis and reporting. However, terms peculiar to traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) are not included in the widely used international adverse reaction terminologies. This paper briefly introduced the differences of World Health Organization adverse reaction terminology (WHOART) and medical dictionary for regulatory activities (MedDRA) which was developed by the International Council for Harmonization of Technical Requirements for Pharmaceuticals for Human Use (ICH). Based on the existing development of TCM terminologies for coding ADRs, basic path for developing internationally recognized TCM terminologies was proposed in this paper.
