Educational information, not medical advice — ask your doctor or midwife.
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Shui Niu Jiao is horn from the water buffalo. The horn is shaved into thin chips or ground into powder. Chinese medicine uses it as a cooling drug for high fever.
It is a single drug, but it is rarely used alone. It is one part of a mixed formula. Healers give it for high fever with a rash, for nosebleeds, and for other bleeding.
It took the place of rhino horn, which is now banned worldwide. Long use in one tradition is not proof that a drug works. Good human trials are missing, so the evidence grade here is insufficient.
The honest answer is that no one has shown how it works in people.
The horn is mostly keratin. That is the same hard protein found in your nails. Lab work breaks the horn into small protein bits.
Some of these bits lower fever in mice. Some seem to change how fast blood clots in a test tube. None of that has been shown to hold true in people.
In Chinese medicine the horn is said to "cool the blood" and "clear heat toxin". That is a way of sorting signs and symptoms. It is not a proven body process.
You will most often meet it inside a mixed formula, not on its own.
Common forms are thin horn shavings for boiling, a fine powder, and dried extract granules. It is also pressed into ready-made pills.
Some ready-made pills that hold this horn also hold cinnabar (a mercury mineral) or realgar (an arsenic mineral). Both are heavy metals and both can poison you. Read the full label before you buy.
Water buffalo horn appears in Chinese drug texts from the Ming era, including Li Shizhen's Bencao Gangmu of 1578.
For centuries it sat in the shadow of rhino horn, which was the famous fever drug. World trade in rhino horn was banned in 1977, and China banned its use in 1993.
Since then, water buffalo horn has been the standard stand-in. It is now written into modern Chinese formula books in rhino horn's place.
Some reactions to Shui Niu Jiao need urgent care. Call your local emergency number or go to an emergency department straight away — do not wait to see whether it passes.
Get medical help right away if a fever goes above 39.5C, or if a fever lasts more than two days.
Go to an emergency room if you see a rash that spreads fast, a stiff neck, confusion, a fit, or trouble breathing. Do the same for bleeding that will not stop.
Call your doctor if you get new bruises, bleeding gums, dark urine, yellow skin or eyes, or a shaky, numb feeling in your hands or feet. Those last signs can mean heavy metal poisoning from a mixed pill.
Evidence grades and traditional-use labels are explained in our methodology. Nothing here is medical advice.
Reviewed by the HealisticMD editorial team How we grade evidence →
The published evidence for Shui Niu Jiao is weak or absent. That usually means no controlled trial has tested it, not that a trial found it ineffective — the two are different, and we grade only what has been published.
What it is typically used for, usual dose, cautions, and the study behind it where real trial data exists.
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