Potential Role of EGF and EGFR in Tongue Coating Formation

Tongue coating, as a sensitive index of the physiological and pathological changes of human organs, is an important basis for the Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) syndrome differentiation and treatment. Mechanism of the formation and change of tongue coating is an important scientific problem. In recent years, researches indicated that in addition to apoptosis related genes, epidermal growth factor (EGF) and epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) also contribute to tongue coating formation. In this paper, we summarized recent studies on the potential role of EGF and EGFR in regulating the formation of tongue coating to provide some reference for the further investigations on tongue coating formation mechanisms.