Chinese herbal property theory (CHPT) is the fundamental characteristic of Chinese materia medica different from modern medicines. It reflects the herbal properties associated with efficacy and formed the early framework of four properties and five flavors in Shennong's Classic of Materia Medica. After the supplement and improvement of CHPT in the past thousands of years, it has developed a theory system including four properties, five flavors, meridian entry, direction of medicinal actions (ascending, descending, floating and sinking) and toxicity. However, because of the influence of philosophy about yin-yang theory and five-phase theory and the difference of cognitive approach and historical background at different times, CHPT became complex. One of the complexity features was the multiple methods for determining herbal property, which might include the inference from herbal efficacy, the thought of Chinese Taoist School and witchcraft, the classification thinking according to manifestations, etc. Another complexity feature was the multiselection associations between herbal property and efficacy, which indicated that the same property could be inferred from different kinds of efficacy. This paper analyzed these complexity features and provided the importance of cognitive approaches and efficacy attributes corresponding to certain herbal property in the study of CHPT.

Chinese herbal property is the highly summarized concept of herbal nature and pharmaceutical effect, which reflect the characteristics of herbal actions on human body. These herbal actions, also interpreted as presenting the information about pharmaceutical effect contained in herbal property on the biological carrier, are defined as herbal property expressions. However, the biological expression of herbal property is believed to possess complex features for the involved complexity of Chinese medicine and organism. Firstly, there are multiple factors which could influence the expression results of herbal property such as the growth environment, harvest season and preparing methods of medicinal herbs, and physique and syndrome of body. Secondly, there are multiple biological approaches and biochemical indicators for the expression of the same property. This paper elaborated these complexities for further understanding of herbal property. The individuality of herbs and expression factors should be well analyzed in the related studies.

Herbal property theory of traditional Chinese medicines is the theoretical guidance on authentication of medicinal plants, herborization, preparation of herbal medicines for decoction and clinical application, with important theoretical value and prac- tical significance. Our research team proposed the "three-element" theory for herbal properties for the first time, conducted a study by using combined methods of philology, chemistry, pharmacology and mathematics, and then drew the research conclusion that herbal properties are defined as the chemical compositions-based comprehensive expression with complex and multi-level (positive/negative) biological effects in specific organism state. In this paper, researchers made a systematic mathematical analysis in four aspects--the correlation between herbal properties and chemical component factors, the correlation between herbal properties and organism state fac- tor, the correlation between herbal properties and biological effect factor and the integration study of the three elements, proposed future outlook, and provided reference to mathematical studies and mathematical analysis of herbal properties.
Drug Compounding ; Drugs, Chinese Herbal ; chemistry ; pharmacology ; Humans ; Medicine, Chinese Traditional ; Models, Theoretical ; Phytotherapy ; Plants, Medicinal ; chemistry

Objective To investigate the clinical outcomes of radical surgery for pancreatic body and tail tumors accompanied with sinistral portal hypertension (SPH).Method The clinicopathological data of 35 patients with pancreatic body and tail tumors accompanied with SPH operated from January 2004 to December 2014 were retrospectively analyzed.Results Of 35 patients,22 patients had body and tail pancreatic carcinomas,10 patients had malignant solid pesudopaillary tumors and 1 patients had a neuroendocrine tumor.All these patients developed splenomegaly and varices in the gastric fundus with normal hepatic function.The splenic vein pressure was (27.3 ±3.8)cmH2O (1 cmH2O =0.098 kPa),its average diameter was (1.3 ± 0.3) cm,and the speed of splenic vein blood flow was (8.9 ± 0.8) cm/s.Of the 35 patients with pancreatic body and tail tumors who underwent radical resectional operations,22 patients in addition underwent devascularization.There were 13 of these 22 patients who underwent pericardical devascularization and the remaining 9 underwent total or proximal gastrectomy.The main complications were pancreatic fistula (n =5,14.2％),intra-abdominal infection (n =4,11.5％),delayed gastric emptying (n =1,2.8％),lymphatic fistula (n =1,2.8％) and gastric perforation (n =1,2.8％).The post-complication morbidity rate was 34％.All these patients were followed-up for 6 to 60 months after operations.There was no upper gastrointestinal bleeding which occurred within 6 months of operation.Conclusion Multi-disciplinary treatment,complete preoperative evaluation,correct perioperative and individualized management enhanced efficacy in the surgical treatment of patients with pancreatic body and tail tumors with SPH.

Eight mongrel dogs were involved in the investigation of sevoflurane effects on renal blood flow (RBF). After intravenous anesthesia and surgical preparation, RBF, MAP, HR, CVP, CO and SV were recorded as baseline. Sevoflurane was then administered to achieve end-tidal concentrations of 1, 2, 3 and 4% in succession. Following 20 mins equilibration at each concentration, and 30 mins after the termination of inhalation, the above parameters were measured repeatly for comparing. Results showed significant dose-related depressions of RBF, MAP, HR and CO with sevoflurane. RBF didn't reduce significantly until MAP decreased to 9.3kPa, with end-tidal concentration of sevoflurane no less than 3%, it didn't recover in step with improved hemodynamic parameters after sevoflurane withdrawal. This study indicates that sevoflurane may influence little on autoregulation of RBF, its dose-related cardiac depression may be responsible for the reduction of RBF.

Objective To investigate the clinical efficacy of radical operation for gastric cancer with liver cirrhosis.Methods The clinicopathological data of 56 gastric caner patients with liver cirrhosis performed on between Jan 2000 and Dec 2013 were analyzed retrospectively.Results The morbidity rate was 71％.The main complications of the group with liver cirrhosis were postoperative ascites (7 cases),delayed gastric emptying(6 cases),pulmonary infection(8 cases),intra-abdominal infection (5 cases),anastomotic leakage (3 cases).wound infection (2 cases)and,astrointestinal bleeding(1 cases).Postoperative complications of gastric cancer with liver cirrhosis were associated with age (＞ 60 yrs),Child-pugh grade(B),lymph node dissection(D2).There were no mortality.The 1-,3-and 5-year survival rates of the 56 cases were 73.2％,41％ and 26.7％.Conclusion Multi-disciplinary treatment,complete preoperative evaluation,correct perioperative management,individualized principle were the best mode on effective treatment of the patients with liver cirrhosis.

Objective To apply the virtual reality training in clinical education of rehabilitation therapy. Methods 26 undergraduate students majored in rehabilitation therapy were randomly divided into 2 groups during clinical education of physiotherapy. The experimental group (n=14) received virtual reality training first, and then with routine teaching, while the control group (n=12) learnt with routine teaching only. Self-assessment and physiotherapy test were conducted after training. Results The experimental group reported more interested, initiative and positive in training than those of the control group. The experimental group achieved higher scores in practical tests than the control group (P<0.05), while no significant difference in the theoretical examination between the groups. Conclusion Application of virtual reality training may improve the teaching of physiotherapy.

Knowledge Discovery in Databases is gaining attention and raising new hopes for traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) researchers. It is a useful tool in understanding and deciphering TCM theories. Aiming for a better understanding of Chinese herbal property theory (CHPT), this paper performed an improved association rule learning to analyze semistructured text in the book entitled Shennong's Classic of Materia Medica. The text was firstly annotated and transformed to well-structured multidimensional data. Subsequently, an Apriori algorithm was employed for producing association rules after the sensitivity analysis of parameters. From the confirmed 120 resulting rules that described the intrinsic relationships between herbal property (qi, flavor and their combinations) and herbal efficacy, two novel fundamental principles underlying CHPT were acquired and further elucidated: (1) the many-to-one mapping of herbal efficacy to herbal property; (2) the nonrandom overlap between the related efficacy of qi and flavor. This work provided an innovative knowledge about CHPT, which would be helpful for its modern research.

Studying the essence of syndromes (Zheng) in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is a fundamental challenge in basic theoretical research of TCM. The relationship between any given syndrome and biochemical indicators is one of the important aspects of the study. As the indexes selected in each study are specific to a particular Western medical disease diagnosis, and the disease factor is inevitably introduced into the study, the effect of disease factor on the index changes cannot be assessed effectively by traditional data processing methods. This is known as "the same syndrome with different reasons", which has resulted in confusion in TCM research. This study aimed at providing a mathematical tool to address this issue. Based on information theory and the residual-split method, the syndrome information, which was covered in the index variation, was quantitatively calculated in this paper as an independent part of the disease factor. A mathematical model capable of objectively assessing and statistically testing the effect of the syndrome factor on the index changes was established. Applying this model to literature data of studies on the relationship between cyclic nucleotides and yang-deficiency syndrome showed following results. First, the values of yang-deficiency syndrome information were negative for cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP) while positive for cyclic guanosine monophosphate (cGMP) in all included literature. This indicated that the group of yang-deficiency syndrome was correlated with an obvious trend of reduced cAMP levels and increased cGMP levels. Second, the statistical test results of yang-deficiency syndrome information of the two indexes were different among the literature included. The quality of original data was considered as a possible reason. Third, the significant differences between the yang-deficiency group of a specific disease and the normal group may, in some cases, be caused by a disease factor rather than a syndrome factor. The mathematical model provided a reasonable mathematical tool for the analysis of disease factor and syndrome factor in clinical research of TCM, suggesting that the mathematical model may give rise to innovative ideas and methods in the study of syndromes.

Adolescent ; Child ; Child, Preschool ; Colitis, Ulcerative ; diagnosis ; therapy ; Crohn Disease ; diagnosis ; therapy ; Female ; Humans ; Male ; Prognosis ; Retrospective Studies