The eighteen incompatible medicaments is the incompatibilities in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). However, in some special occasion, the incompatible medicaments can also be used in one prescription in the clinical applications. In order to reveal the theoretical basis for applications of incompatible medicaments in prescriptions, we analyzed ancient prescriptions and found that there are contrary Chinese herbal nature combina-tions (CHNCs) which have the same meridian tropism as well as the opposite nature and taste in prescriptions. In clinical applications, one of the non-contrary CHNCs was selected as the main response to syndrome differentia-tion. The contrary CHNCs in the same meridian tropism were used to restrict each other and therefore have the protective effects. The features found in this paper will be beneficial to further research on the rational applica-tion of incompatible medicaments.

Chinese herbal nature combination (CHNC) is the particular combination of nature, taste and channel tropism, which can be used to express the effect of Chinese herbal medicine in the clinical application concisely. The complex system model for the relationship between CHNC and viscera was constructed in this paper based on the thinking model of viscera theory. The model is able to reveal the functional features of CHNC. The model will promote research on the relationship between CHNC and viscera and provide new ideas for clinical applications of CHNC.

This study was aimed to explain the relationship between chemical component and therapy objective and to identify effective component group (ECG). The objective of this study is to build a new method to identify the ECG. Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) formula and one of its treated diseases were selected as the re-search object. The entity grammar systems (EGS) were used as the theoretical framework. A grammatical method for ECG identification was constructed. The component-disease relationship was inferred and the ECG was identi-fied with these inference results. In this paper, 16 compounds which act to 12 proteins in Type 1 diabetes melli-tus (T1D) disease network were identified from Bai-Hu Tang plus Xiao-Ke Fang and 9 chemical compounds were determined as the candidate effective components group. The results indicated that this method can be used to identify ECG and provide a new way to elucidate the molecular mechanism of TCM formula.

Gastrodia elatais graded as top medication in theShen Nong’s Herbal Classic. It was mainly distributed in southwest China. Its quality varied with geographical location. And the quality difference between wild and cultivated sample was extreme. Identifications using traditional methods were unable to accurately distinguish the quality ofG. elata. Therefore, near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy combined with pattern recognition method was used to distinguish the quality ofG. elata from different geographical locations as well as cultivated or wild. The results demonstrated that using NIR spectroscopy combined with multiclass classification algorithm, the geographical location ofG. elata can be accurately distinguished. The prediction accuracy can reach as high as 94.3% and 96.4% for both applications. Besides, the classification model was built without preprocessing; hence, it can be extended to be applied on-site.

Objective:To establish a method for determination of total flavonoids,eriodictyol-7-methylether and isosakuranetin in Artemisia halodendron seeds.Method:The content of total flavonoids was determined by ultraviolet spectrophotometry at 506 nm,and compared with eriodictyol-7-methylether as a reference substance;the content of eriodictyol-7-methylether and isosakuranetin was determined by RP-HPLC,the analytical column was YMC-Pack ODS-A column(5?m,4.6 mm?250 mm),the mobile phase consisted of acetonitrile-0.2% phosphoric acid aqueous(35:65) at a ow rate of 1.0 ml?min-1,and the detection wavelength was 288 nm.Results:The linear range of total avonoids was 0.1228--0.7368mg(r=0.9991) and the average recovery(n=6) was 100.5%(RSD=1.41%);the linear ranges of eriodictyol-7-methylether and isosakuranetin were 3.016--30.16?g/ml(r=0.9999)and 3.304--33.04?g/ml(r=0.9999),respectively;the average recoveries(n=6) were 98.9%(RSD=1.20%)and 96.8%(RSD=1.38%),respectively.Conclusion:The methods of UV and HPLC are simple,accurate with good reproducibility and suitable for determination of total avonoids,eriodictyol-7-methylether and isosakuranetin.

Objective:Adopting RP-HPLC method,to study and establish the fingerprint of smilacis rhizome.Methods: YMC-Pack ODS-A(5 ?m,4.6 mm?250 mm) chromatographic column,acetonitrile-0.05% phosphoric acid solution gradient elution were applied;with flow rate of 0.8 ml/min and UV detector at 290 nm.Results: Technology investigation indicated that the analytical method this study established has a better reproducibility.The similarity of smilacis rhizoma fingerprints from different sources is better;smilacis rhizome and its three confusions fingerprints are apparently different.Conclusion: HPLC fingerprint analysis can be a method for quality control of medical material of smilacis rhizoma.

Functional analysis concisely summarizes and concentrates on the therapeutic characteristics and features of Chinese herbal medicine. Standardization of the terms for Chinese herbal functions not only plays a key role in modern research and development of Chinese herbal medicine, but also has far-reaching clinical applications. In this paper, a new method for standardizing the terms for Chinese herbal function was proposed. Firstly, functional targets were collected. Secondly, the pathological conditions and the mode of action of every functional target were determined by analyzing the references. Thirdly, the relationships between the pathological condition and the mode of action were determined based on Chinese medicine theory and data. This three-step approach allows for standardization of the terms for Chinese herbal functions. Promoting the standardization of Chinese medicine terms will benefit the overall clinical application of Chinese herbal medicine.

The literature study and survey revealed existed problems and factors such as the difficulties to maintain quality of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), sustainable development, homogenization and indeterminacy of clinical orientation diagnosis, lack of favorable evidence-based medicine and pharmacoeconomics data to support, lack of ev-idence of safety evaluation, which restrict the development of TCM enterprises. Based on problems and factors men-tioned above, recommendations were made on the healthy development of TCM enterprises, which include guarantee of the quality of TCM herbs and the sustainable development of its resource; conduct systematic evidence-based pharmacoeconomic research, identify the clinical orientation; carry out safety assessment systematically, improve the specification; improve clinical effectiveness-oriented quality standards.

Near infrared chemical imaging (NIR-CI) is an emerging technology for rapidly analyzing the critical quality attribute of Chinese materia medica (CMM). It integrates NIR spectroscopy with chemical imaging. In this paper, it provided a systematic introduction to NIR-CI, such as the core part of instrument, the reliability, transformation, analysis and application of high-dimensional data acquisition. In addition, current studies of NIR-CI application in pharmaceutical field were analyzed. Finally, future opportunities and challenges of NIR -CI applications in the quality control of CMM preparation were prospected.

This study was aimed to establish the classification method of Chinese herbal medicine based on feature parameters extracted from images of herbal transverse section, in order to explore the feasibility of automatic identi-fication method of herbal medicine. The extracted 26 parameters of 18 herbal medicine images by gray-level co-oc-currence matrix and grayscale gradient matrix were used as the basic data set. And the minimum covariance determi-nant (MCD) was used to delete the outliers. A total of 18 identification models were established using the native Bayes method and BP neural network methods. The results showed that the average correct rates of models were 90%. It was concluded the feasibility of using these models in the establishment of the automatic identification method of herbal medicines. It provided new technologies for the quantitative, scientific and objective identification of Chinese herbal medicine.