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.

The concepts of cold and hot herbal properties in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), reflecting the efficacy trends of medicinal herbs, have the Fuzzy characteristics. It is suited for the application of Fuzzy mathematics in research of herbal properties. For a comprehensive evaluation of herbal properties, this work constructed and made a practice of the Fuzzy discrimination model regarding the biological performance of Chinese materia medica.

ObjectiveTo observe the changes of uric acid level and lipid spectrum, and activities lipid metabolism related enzyme as well as uric acid metabolism-related enzymes on quail abdominal obesity model and then investigate the underlying mechanism of abdominal obesity combined with blood lipid spectrum disorder and hyperuricemia model. MethodsThe quail model of abdominal obesity was induced by feeding with high-fat diet.The body weight and abdominal fat content were measured and the abdominal fat index was calculated. The levels of total cholesterol (TC), high density lipoprotein cholesterol, low density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), triglyceride (TG), glucose, and uric acid in serum were determined. The changes of adenosine deaminase (ADA),xanthine oxidase (XOD), lipoprotein lipase (LPL), hepatic lipase (HL), and total esterase (TE) activities were also determined. ResultsOn the 7th day, the body weight, abdominal fat content, and abdominal fat index were not significantly different between the model group and control group ( all P ＞0.05 ). On the 14th day, the body weight was not significantly different between these two groups ( P ＞ 0.05 ), while the abdominal fat content [(3.91 ±2. 13) vs. (2.40±0.96) g, P=0.0468] and abdominal fat index (1.92％ ±0.97％ vs. 1.22％ ±0.45％, P =0.0447) were significantly higher in the model group. On the 7th and 14th day, the levels ofTC (P =0.0042 and P =0.0006, respectively), LDL-C ( P =0.0045 and P =0.0010, respectively) in the model group were significantly higher than those in control group, while the level of TG significantly decreased ( P =0.0006 and P =0.0024, respectively ). On the 7th day, compare with the control group, the activities of ADA ( P =0.0237 )and XOD (P =0.0142) in the model group significantly increased, while the activities of LPL, HL, and TE had no significant changes. On the 14th day, compared with the control group, the activities of ADA ( P =0.0060),XOD ( P =0.0071 ), and LPL ( P =0.0419) in the model group significantly increased, while the activities of HL and TE had no significant changes. ConclusionsHigh-fat diet can induce disorders in blood lipid profiles in quail model, but also may incur abdominal obesity and multiple metabolic disorders. Changes in the activities of uric acid and lipid metabolism related enzymes may be the underlying mechanism of disorders in blood lipid profile and its associated hyperuricemia and abdominal accumulation.

The properties of Chinese materia medica are believed to be the summarization of the effects of biological performance on the various body states. Systemic discussion of chemical-factor elements, body-condition elements, biological-performance elements and their interrelationships is needed for research into the properties of Chinese materia medica. Following the practical characteristics of Chinese medicine, the three-element mathematical model was formed by introducing some mathematical concepts and methods and was used to study the cold or hot property of Chinese medicine, and to investigate the difference in biological performances of the two properties.

Evidence of the pharmacological activity of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) provides the basis for clinical prescription. Study of the classification of Chinese medicines according to these activities is key to understanding the general active tendencies of medicinal prescriptions, exploring their material basis, investigating their properties and searching for their alternatives. Taking the herbal classic Shennong's Materia Medica Classic (Shennong Bencao Jing) for the data source, this paper studied the classification of Chinese medicines based on semi-supervised incremental clustering algorithm using "micro-cluster" concept in order to investigate the complex similarity among Chinese medicines. The results showed that 253 Chinese medicines were reasonably classified into 14 types, such as invigoration, clearing heat, diuresis, dredging blockages in the channels, treating gynecological conditions and treating strange diseases caused by ghosts. The results also showed that the other 112 Chinese medicines were classified into 112 individual types and the same high similarity to different known types was the main reason for this. The semi-supervised incremental clustering algorithm employed in the study had a high quality and a good development for clustering which is suitable for classification of Chinese medicines. This study illustrated the diversity of Chinese medicines and their complex similarities, thus aiming to provide innovative ideas and methods for related research.

OBJECTIVE: To study the regulatory effect of IL-35 on the balance of Treg/Th17 cells in AR patients. METHOD: In this study, 30 cases were randomly selected from outpatients of otolaryngological department in the second hospital of Hebei Medical university who were diagnosed as AR. Another 20 healthy cases enrolled from physical examination branch of our hospital were control group. The expression level of IL-35 and IL-17 in peripheral blood were detected by using ELISA and defeced CD4+CD25+Foxp3+ T cell and CD4+IL-17+T cell expression level were identified via flow cytometry. RESULT: The expression level of IL-35 in AR group was obviously lower than that in control group, and the difference was a statistically significance (t = -8.145, P < 0.01). The expression level of IL-17 in AR group was obviously higher than that in control group, and the difference was a statistically significance (t = 14.969, P < 0.01). There was a remarkable negative correlation between the IL-35 and IL-17 expression in the serum of AR group (r = -0.773, P < 0.01). The percentage of CD4+CD25+Foxp3+ T cell in CD4+ T cell was significant lower in AR group than that in control group (t = -13.678, P < 0.01). The percentage of CD4+IL-17+ T cell in CD4+ T cell was much higher in AR group than that in control group (t = 5.632, P < 0.01). There was a remarkable negative correlation between the Treg and Th17 expression in the peripheral blood of AR group (r = -0.613, P < 0.01). There was a positive correlation between the expression of CD4+ CD25+Foxp3+ T cell and IL-35. There was a negative correlation between the IL-35 and Th17 in AR group (r = 0. -594, P < 0.01). CONCLUSION The lower expression of IL-35 was related to the incidence of AR, and it was an important cytokines for that. The lower expression of IL-35 may inhibit the proliferation of Treg cells, lead to hyper function of Th17 cells, increase secretion of s IL-17 and result in unbalance of Treg/Th17 cells; these may be the important mechanism of the occurrence of AR, thus regulation of IL-35 may become a new target for the immunological therapy of AR.
Case-Control Studies ; Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay ; Flow Cytometry ; Humans ; Interleukin-17 ; blood ; Interleukins ; Rhinitis, Allergic ; immunology ; T-Lymphocytes, Regulatory ; immunology ; Th17 Cells ; immunology

Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) property theory is believed to be a key and difficult point of basic theory studies of TCM. Complex concepts, components and characteristics of TCM property have long puzzled researchers and urged them to develop new angles and approaches. In the view of cognitive science, TCM property theory is a cognitive process of storing, extracting, rebuilding and summarizing the sensory information about TCMs and their effects during the medical practice struggling against diseases under the guidance of traditional Chinese philosophical thinking. The cognitive process of TCM property has particular cognitive elements and strategies. Taking into account clinical application characteristics of TCMs, this study defines the particular cognitive elements. In the combination of research methods of modern chemistry, biology and mathematics, and on the basis early-stage work for five years, we have built a TCM property cognition model based on three elements and practiced with drugs with pungent and hot properties as example, in the hope of interpreting TCM properties with modern science and providing thoughts for the nature of medical properties and instruction for rational clinical prescription.
Animals ; Cognition ; Drug Therapy ; psychology ; Drugs, Chinese Herbal ; chemistry ; pharmacology ; Humans ; Medicine, Chinese Traditional ; psychology ; Models, Theoretical

Ribociclib is an oral small molecule cyclindependent kinase 4/6 inhibitor,which inhibits tumor progression by inhibiting the conversion of tumor cells from G1 phase to S phase.The combination ofribociclib and letrozole was approved in the United States on March 13,2017 as a treatment for HR+/HER2-advanced and metastatic breast cancer patients.Clinical results showed that the drug on advanced and metastatic tumors had a significant inhibitory effect and could extend the survival of patients without deterioration compared with using letrozole alone.The incidence of adverse drug reactions is higher,but the tolerance is better.This article focuses on pharmacodynamics,pharmacokinetic,clinical results and adverse effects of this drug.

Clinical pharmacist participated in the whole process of drug therapy for one case of acute hypotension adverse event af-ter PCI. Based on the patient's preoperative and postoperative medication, the hypothesis was proposed and the causes of acute hypo-tension were positively analyzed. From the perspective of pharmacology, professional advice was given and satisfactory therapeutic effects were obtained. The experience of pharmaceutical care after PCI was summarized as well.