In traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), Colla corii asini (CCA, E'jiao) is a gelatin-like traditional Chinese medicine refined from donkey hide and has been widely used in clinical antanemic therapy for more than 2000 years. In the last decade, many studies had addressed the effect of CCA on the anemia using modern pharmacological approaches. The results indicated that CCA contains collagen protein,glycogen and a variety of trace elements, a variety of amino acids, etc. the main components of CCA can promote hematopoiesis by a number of mechanisms which eventually increase the peripheral erythrocyte counts and Hb concentration. Therefore, the investigators proposed that the hematopoietic effects of CCA might also contribute to the treatment of thalassemia with insuffcient or abnormal Hb concentration.