Objective: Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been diagnosed as an epidemic disease characterized by cold and dampness pathogens in TCM clinic. Due to many Chinese medicines with different functions were used in the treatment of COVID-19, it is very important to find the law of application of damp-removing traditional Chinese medicine with high frequency application, with view to providing a reference for the use and research of Chinese medicine to further control the pandemic. Methods: The publicly released diagnosis and treatment programs issued by the National Health Commission and Health Commission of provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities, and Chinese herbs prescription information in these were collected, a database was established, and Excel and Graphpad 8.0 software were used to analyze the frequency of use of various Chinese medicines, the frequency and property characters including five flavors (bitter, pungent, sweet, sour, and salty) and four natures (warm, hot, cool, and cold) and channel tropisms of Chinese medicine for removing dampness. Results: A total of 137 prescriptions of Chinese medicine for treating COVID-19 were collected, including 178 TCMs showing functions of resolving phlegm, relieving cough and asthma, resolving dampness, clearing damp and inducing dieresis, clearing heat, tonifying deficiency, and relieving exterior syndrome, in which the TCMs with the first four functions that we called the dampness-removing TCMs, accounted for 35.78%. Also a number of TCMs in the rest functions showed removing-dampness. The first four functions were divided into subfunctions including aromatic resolving dampness, clearing heat and drying dampness, drying dampness and tonifying spleen qi, drying dampness and removing phlegm, inducing diuresis and relieving swelling, inducing diuresis and relieving exterior syndrome. Among them, the most frequently used TCMs was Ephedrae Herba, followed by Citri Reticulatae Pericarpium, Pogostemonis Herba, Pinelliae Rhizoma, Poria, Scutellariae Radix, and Atractylodis Rhizoma. The property character analysis in the dampness-removing TCMs showed that bitter and pungent were largely present and sour and astringent were absent, warm and hot were dominant; And the lung, spleen, stomach, large intestine, bladder were main channel tropisms. Conclusion: Dampness-removing TCMs are the first important type of traditional Chinese medicine to be considered in the treatment of COVID-19 in Chinese medicine. The application of dampness-removing TCMs in the treatment of COVID-19 needs to be combined with its application law. This study may provide meaningful and useful information on further research to investigate the effective compounds from the dampness-removing Chinese medicine with high frequency application, and also provide a reference for the clinical treatment of COVID-19 accurately against dampness evil with dampness-removing traditional Chinese medicines.

Our previous studies have demonstrated that Fam20C promotes differentiation and mineralization of odontoblasts, ameloblasts, osteoblasts and osteocytes during tooth and bone development. Ablation of the Fam20C gene inhibits bone and tooth growth by increasing fibroblast growth factor 23 in serum and causing hypophosphatemia in conditional knockout mice. However, control and regulation of the expression of Fam20C are still unknown. In this study, we generated a transgenic reporter model which expresses green fluorescence protein (GFP) driven by the Fam20C promoter. Recombineering was used to insert a 16 kb fragment of the mouse Fam20C gene (containing the 15 kb promoter and 1.1 kb of exon 1) into a pBluescript SK vector with the topaz variant of GFP and a bovine growth hormone polyadenylation sequence. GFP expression was subsequently evaluated by histomorphometry on cryosections from E14 to adult mice. Fluorescence was evident in the bone and teeth as early as E17.5. The GFP signal was maintained stably in odontoblasts and osteoblasts until 4 weeks after birth. The expression of GFP was significantly reduced in teeth, alveolar bone and muscle by 8 weeks of age. We also observed colocalization of the GFP signal with the Fam20C antibody in postnatal 1- and 7-day-old animals. Successful generation of Fam20C-GFP transgenic mice will provide a unique model for studying Fam20C gene expression and the biological function of this gene during odontogenesis and osteogenesis.
Animals ; Calcium-Binding Proteins ; genetics ; Extracellular Matrix Proteins ; genetics ; Green Fluorescent Proteins ; genetics ; HEK293 Cells ; Humans ; Mice ; Mice, Inbred C57BL ; Mice, Transgenic ; Odontogenesis ; genetics ; Osteogenesis ; genetics

Objective: To analyze the medication rules of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) preventive oral prescriptions for COVID-19. Methods: The preventive oral prescriptions for COVID-19 published by national and provincial health and wellness committees, administrations of TCM, medical institutions at all levels, medical masters and Chinese medicine experts were collected to establish a database, manual screening was carried out according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria, and frequency statistics, association rule analysis. The mutual information method, entropy hierarchical clustering and other methods were improved through Excel and the TCM inheritance auxiliary platform V2.5 to mine the rules and characteristics of medication. Results: The selected 157 prescriptions contained a total of 130 TCMs. The top five TCMs with the highest use frequency were Glycyrrhizae Radix et Rhizoma (86), Astragali Radix (80), Lonicerea Japonicae Flos (70), Atractylodis Macrocephalae Rhizoma (62), Saposhnikoviae Radix (60). In accordance with TCM efficacy classification, most of them were medicines for qi-tonifying (279), followed by medicines for clearing heat and drying dampness (163), dispelling pathogenic wind-cold (126), resolving dampness (111), as well as dispelling pathogenic wind-heat (99). The characteristics of four-natures of the selected medicines are as follows: most of them were cold (59), followed by warm (38) and mild (21). In terms of five-taste, most of them were sweet (26) and acrid-and-bitter (24), followed by sweet-and-bitter (20), bitter (20) and acrid (15). For the meridian attribution, the five-zang organs and six-fu organs were all involved, most of them attributed to lung meridian (80), followed by stomach meridian (57) and spleen meridian (40). Based on association rule analysis, 12 commonly used medicine combinations with two or three TCMs were found. The commonly used medicinal pairs included Astragali Radix and Saposhnikoviae Radix (51), Astragali Radix and Atractylodis Macrocephalae Rhizoma (46), Atractylodis Macrocephalae Rhizoma and Saposhnikoviae Radix (43), Astragali Radix and Atractylodis Macrocephalae Rhizoma and Saposhnikoviae Radix (38), Forsythiae Fructus and Astragali Radix (37), and so on. In addition, 14 core combinations of medicines were obtained by complex system entropy cluster analysis, on this basis, six new prescriptions were screened out based on unsupervised entropy hierarchical clustering analysis. According to The Catalogue of Edible Traditional Chinese Medicinal Materials, Traditional Chinese Medicinal Materials for Health Food, and New Resources of Food published by National Health Commission of the People's Republic of China, there are 35 species belonging to the group of edible traditional Chinese medicinal materials, 20 species belonging to the group of new resources of food, 31 species belonging to the group of traditional Chinese medicinal materials for health food, 19.11% of the preventive oral prescriptions for COVID-19 were composed of the medicines belonging to the above three groups. Besides, there are 11 toxic species, and 24.84% of the preventive oral prescriptions for COVID-19 contained toxic TCMs. Conclusion: We found that invigorating qi and resolving dampness were the main treatment used to prevent for COVID-19, combined with the methods for strengthening vital energy and eliminating pathogenic factors. Most of the preventive oral prescriptions for COVID-19 were treated in lung, spleen and stomach meridians. In the process of selecting prescriptions and using TCMs to prevent for COVID-19, the safety of preventive medicines was also emphasized. And the theory of “Preventive Treatment of Disease” was embodied in these preventive oral prescriptions for COVID-19. For the prescriptions containing toxic TCMs, special attention should be paid to their safety in clinical application.

The quality definition of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is a hot area in modern research of TCM. In recent years, the characteristics of one herb with multiple effects have been widely accepted and studied. The typical opposite-effect of herbs is considered as a special part of one herb with multiple effects, and was summarized in this paper. Sanqi was used as an example of opposite-effect herbs for developing the strategies and approaches on the Q-markers. The traditional opposite-effect should be studied by modern pharmacological research methods. The correlation of the chemical components with the opposite effects should be established in order to verify the material basis and evaluate the mechanism including targets and pathways. The unique characteristics of chemical components should be analyzed and defined. Finally, the Q-markers of the opposite effect herb will be confirmed. This paper provides a useful reference for the precise quality control of herbal opposite-effects.