1.Construction of the clinical diagnosis and treatment model during the “pre-disease to disease” window period in traditional Chinese medicine: integration of objective multimodal data from the perspective of traditional Chinese medicine stateology
Danyang Li ; Min Ai ; Pai Zhou ; Ying Deng ; Chaoyang Yang ; Qinghua Peng
Digital Chinese Medicine 2026;9(2):173-183
The philosophy of “treating disease before its onset” is a fundamental concept of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), permeating its diagnostic and therapeutic framework, and is central to clinical practice. However, current TCM diagnostic and treatment models for the “pre-disease to disease” window period face several limitations, including the lack of comprehensive clinical parameters, difficulties in characterizing and integrating heterogeneous multimodal data, and insufficient dynamic precision in interventions and efficacy evaluations. To address these issues, guided by Professor Candong Li’s theory of TCM stateology, this study focuses on integrating objective multimodal data. It proposes a new model for personalized TCM diagnosis and treatment targeting the “pre-disease to disease” window period. This approach first proposes the idea of restructuring the conceptual framework of “symptom” and integrating multi-source heterogeneous data at macroscopic, mesoscopic, and microscopic levels to form a three-dimensional assessment indicator system. By integrating graph neural networks, convolutional neural networks, attention mechanisms, and knowledge graph-guided weight allocation, this approach enables collaborative representation, alignment, and fusion of multi-source data. Subsequently, it plans to construct a multimodal fusion model at both feature and decision levels, in order to establish mappings between indicators and TCM state elements, and to screen key indicators characterizing pathological evolution during the window period. Furthermore, it proposes a technical path for enhancing model interpretability using methods such as SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP) and Ablation-CAM++. Finally, with state assessment as the core, it proposes the concept of constructing a dynamic evaluation method for individualized diagnosis and treatment based on time-series data analysis using algorithms such as long short-term memory (LSTM) networks and gated recurrent units (GRUs). Moreover, a causal inference framework and semi-supervised learning strategies are introduced to enable quantitative evaluation of individual intervention effects and to provide interpretable therapeutic feedback, forming a complete technical path from data representation and fusion, weight adjustment, and interpretability analysis, to dynamic diagnosis feedback. This study aims to address deficiencies in the current TCM diagnosis and treatment model during the “pre-disease to disease” window period and to provide an operational framework for the clinical practice of TCM’s “treating disease before its onset”.
2.Attenuation of oxidative injury in retinal photoreceptor cells by Gouqizi (Lycii Fructus) and Danshen (Salviae Miltiorrhizae Radix et Rhizoma) through modulation of ANGPTL4
Jun Peng ; Junjiang Jiang ; Junnan Zhong ; Siyi Zhou ; Tingyan Hu ; Xuyu Chen ; Qinghua Peng ; Yasha Zhou
Digital Chinese Medicine 2026;9(2):290-301
Objective:
To investigate the protective effects of Gouqizi (Lycii Fructus, GQZ)-Danshen (Salviae Miltiorrhizae Radix et Rhizoma, DS) against hydrogen peroxide (H2O2)-induced oxidative injury in 661W retinal photoreceptor cells and to explore whether these effects involve angiopoietin-like 4 (ANGPTL4).
Methods:
Liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) was used to identify the major components of GQZ-DS aqueous extract. An H2O2-induced oxidative injury model was established in 661W cells. Working concentrations of H2O2 and GQZ-DS were determined using the cell counting kit-8 (CCK-8) assay. Cells were subjected to GQZ-DS, ANGPTL4 knockdown, or ANGPTL4 overexpression as indicated. Flow cytometry was used to analyze cell cycle distribution, apoptotic rate, and intracellular reactive oxygen species (ROS). Colorimetric determination of malondialdehyde (MDA) content and superoxide dismutase (SOD) activity using the thiobarbituric acid (TBA) method was performed. The protein expression level of ANGPTL4 was assessed by immunofluorescence. Reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) was performed to quantify the mRNA level of ANGPTL4. Western blot was used to detect the protein levels of ANGPTL4 and cleaved caspase-3.
Results:
LC-MS identified five major constituents in the GQZ-DS aqueous extract: 2-O-β-D-glucopyranosyl-L-ascorbic acid, rutin, D-galactose, salvianolic acid A, and tanshinone IIA. The CCK-8 method selected 300 μmol/L H2O2 as the oxidative stress condition for experiments, and 0.05 and 0.1 g/mL were selected as the low and high doses of GQZ-DS, respectively, for subsequent experiments. The intervention with H2O2 resulted in reduced cell viability, elevated ROS and MDA levels, decreased SOD activity, increased apoptotic rate, upregulated cleaved caspase-3 expression, and G0/G1 phase cell cycle arrest of 661W cells. Both low and high doses of GQZ-DS alleviated these alterations, with high dose exhibiting stronger protective effects (P < 0.05 or P < 0.01). GQZ-DS also downregulated ANGPTL4 expression at both the mRNA and protein levels. Following plasmid transfection of cells, the study further revealed that ANGPTL4 knockdown mitigated oxidative stress and apoptosis-related injury, whereas ANGPTL4 overexpression exacerbated these pathological changes. Moreover, GQZ-DS partially reversed the degree of cellular oxidative damage induced by ANGPTL4 overexpression.
Conclusion
GQZ-DS can alleviate the H2O2-induced oxidative injury of 661W retinal photoreceptor cells, and the effects are related to the down-regulation of ANGPTL4 expression.
3.Current Understanding of Retinitis Pigmentosa in Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine
Qing LI ; Ying DENG ; Li XIAO ; Jing LU ; Min AI ; Yasha ZHOU ; Yuhui QIN ; Qinghua PENG ; Yijing YANG
Journal of Traditional Chinese Medicine 2026;67(14):1567-1573
This paper has summarized current studies on retinitis pigmentosa (RP) from two perspectives, which were disease mechanism insights from western medicine, and etiology, pathogenesis and therapeutic principles in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). From the perspective of western medicine, the understanding of RP has evolved from an early single-factor explanation focusing on pathogenic gene mutations to a more comprehensive, multifactorial model involving genetic abnormalities, photoreceptor cell degeneration, retinal pigment epithelium dysfunction, oxidative stress, inflammatory responses, microenvironmental imbalance, and vascular insufficiency. In TCM, RP is considered to be a disorder manifested in the eyes but rooted in dysfunction of the zang-fu (脏腑) organs. Its pathogenesis is primarily associated with congenital insufficiency, liver-kidney depletion, impaired spleen function of transportation and transformation, and stasis obstructing the meridians. The core pathological mechanism can be summarized as "deficiency complicated by stasis", emphasizing holistic imbalance, dynamic disease progression, and syndrome differentiation and treatment. The differences and complementarities between the two medical systems in understanding disease progression are further discussed. RP is proposed to be more appropriately regarded as a complex disease characterized by long-term progression, stage-dependent evolution, and persistent decompensation. Western medicine contributes to elucidating the molecular mechanisms underlying RP and provides the foundation for targeted therapeutic interventions, whereas TCM offers a holistic perspective for understanding disease evolution through the assessment of overall functional status, disease-stage stratification, and long-term syndrome-based regulation.
4.Current Understanding of Retinitis Pigmentosa in Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine
Qing LI ; Ying DENG ; Li XIAO ; Jing LU ; Min AI ; Yasha ZHOU ; Yuhui QIN ; Qinghua PENG ; Yijing YANG
Journal of Traditional Chinese Medicine 2026;67(14):1567-1573
This paper has summarized current studies on retinitis pigmentosa (RP) from two perspectives, which were disease mechanism insights from western medicine, and etiology, pathogenesis and therapeutic principles in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). From the perspective of western medicine, the understanding of RP has evolved from an early single-factor explanation focusing on pathogenic gene mutations to a more comprehensive, multifactorial model involving genetic abnormalities, photoreceptor cell degeneration, retinal pigment epithelium dysfunction, oxidative stress, inflammatory responses, microenvironmental imbalance, and vascular insufficiency. In TCM, RP is considered to be a disorder manifested in the eyes but rooted in dysfunction of the zang-fu (脏腑) organs. Its pathogenesis is primarily associated with congenital insufficiency, liver-kidney depletion, impaired spleen function of transportation and transformation, and stasis obstructing the meridians. The core pathological mechanism can be summarized as "deficiency complicated by stasis", emphasizing holistic imbalance, dynamic disease progression, and syndrome differentiation and treatment. The differences and complementarities between the two medical systems in understanding disease progression are further discussed. RP is proposed to be more appropriately regarded as a complex disease characterized by long-term progression, stage-dependent evolution, and persistent decompensation. Western medicine contributes to elucidating the molecular mechanisms underlying RP and provides the foundation for targeted therapeutic interventions, whereas TCM offers a holistic perspective for understanding disease evolution through the assessment of overall functional status, disease-stage stratification, and long-term syndrome-based regulation.
5.Self-Supervised Multi-Organ Segmentation in Pediatric Abdominal CT Based on Vision Foundation Models
Qinghua ZHANG ; Ming LI ; Zhedian ZHOU ; Jian ZHENG ; Huadan XUE ; Qiuxia WANG ; Yu DU ; Zhen LI
Medical Journal of Peking Union Medical College Hospital 2026;17(4):954-962
To address the scarcity of annotated data for pediatric abdominal CT imaging and the insufficient generalization capability of existing models, we constructed a self-supervised pretraining architecture tailored for pediatric CT domain adaptation based on the visual foundation model DINOv3, and validated its performance in the task of pediatric abdominal multi-organ segmentation. We built a general-purpose radiological visual representation using the large-scale adult CT dataset CT-3M, and introduced a Gram-anchoring mechanism that employs a frozen adult pretrained model as a structural teacher to guide domain alignment of local topological structures on unlabeled pediatric CT data. Combined with a multi-scale feature aggregation strategy and a lightweight Primus decoder, downstream segmentation tasks were evaluated on a public pediatric CT dataset. Based on case-wise paired results, we compared the mean Dice similarity coefficient (DSC) and mean intersection over union (IoU) between our model and the baseline nnU-Net using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test, and computed the relative performance improvements. A total of 867 abdominal CT imaging cases were collected, constituting a pretraining dataset comprising 367 588 two-dimensional CT slices. On the public Pediatric-CT-SEG dataset (359 cases), our model achieved a mean DSC of (71.38±1.08)% and a mean IoU of (63.73±1.01)%, representing improvements of 3.22% and 3.59% over the baseline nnU-Net, respectively, with statistically significant differences ( The self-supervised pretraining framework proposed in this study effectively alleviates the domain shift between adult and pediatric abdominal CT images, significantly enhances segmentation accuracy for pediatric abdominal multi-organs-particularly small organs and structures with complex boundaries-and provides a reliable technical solution for intelligent pediatric imaging analysis in scenarios with limited annotated data.
6.Influencing factors of malnutrition in patients with diabetic foot ulcers:a Meta-analysis
Guiling ZHOU ; Rong XU ; Xuna BIAN ; Jing TAO ; Qinghua LIU ; Hui XIANG
Chinese Journal of Nursing 2025;60(20):2527-2534
Objective To systematically evaluate malnutrition risk factors in diabetic foot patients through systematic review and inform evidence-based nutritional interventions.Methods A top-down search of the literature on risk factors for malnutrition in patients with diabetic foot was conducted according to the"6S"pyramid model,using a computerized decision-making system,clinical guideline websites,professional association websites and databases,with a timeframe of up to March 2025 for the search.Totally 2 researchers independently performed literature screening,quality assessment,and data extraction.Meta-analysis was conducted using Stata 18 software.Results Totally 23 studies with a total sample size of 5 068 cases were included.There were 10 influencing factors being extracted,including age(OR=2.709),BMI(MD=0.709),duration of diabetes mellitus(OR=2.589),glyco-sylated hemoglobin(OR=2.190),albumin(MD=0.578),hemoglobin(OR=2.948),infection(OR=1.816),C-reactive protein(OR=2.228),Wagner classification of diabetic foot(OR=4.620)and degree of self-care(OR=0.220).The incidence of malnutrition in DFU patients who were assessed by the MNA-SF tool,the MNA tool and GLIM tool were 52.2%,70.2%and 41.4%.Conclusion The incidence of malnutrition in DFU patients is relatively high.Healthcare providers should continuously monitor the nutritional status of diabetic foot patients and implement personalized intervention plans to prevent malnutrition.
7.Progress in experimental research on the mechanism of action of cinnamon in central nervous system diseases
Qinghua FAN ; Keqing ZHOU ; Xiaoyan WU ; Xuzhou WU ; Yueqiang HU
Chinese Journal of Comparative Medicine 2025;35(5):102-113
Cinnamomum cassia Presl belongs to the camphor family of evergreen trees,and its bark is used as a medicine.It contains volatile oils,polyphenols,polysaccharides,flavonoids,flavanols,and other chemical constituents that can inhibit the neuroinflammatory response,oxidative stress,and neuronal apoptosis,and provide neuroprotection,as well as improving cerebral ischemia-reperfusion.Progress in modern medicine has demonstrated that cinnamon has unique advantages in terms of the prevention and treatment of central nervous system diseases(CNSD),and cinnamon and its preparations have been widely used to treat neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease.The role of cinnamon for the treatment of CNSD has thus become a hot research topic;however,its mechanism of action in the nervous system has not been comprehensively outlined and summarized.This review therefore summarizes the progress in experimental research worldwide,regarding the use of cinnamon to treat CNSD,to provide an evidence base for clinical research and to develop the use of cinnamon.
8.To Explore the Biological Connotation of Dampness-Heat Syndrome of Spleen and Stomach Based on the Correspondence Between Syndrome and Prescription under the Mode of Combining Disease and Syndrome
Hailin YAN ; Wenliang LYU ; Jing XU ; Shuhan ZHOU ; Qinghua GAO ; Siyi ZHANG ; Hanlin ZHANG ; Lin YU ; Xiaohui XU
World Science and Technology-Modernization of Traditional Chinese Medicine 2025;27(6):1501-1508
Dampness-heat syndrome of the spleen and stomach refers to the evil dampness-heat invading the spleen and stomach,the abnormal rise and fall of the middle jiaoqi machinery,dampness-heat depression and steaming,the physiological dysfunction of the spleen and stomach,with abdominal distention and distention,nausea and lethargy of the limbs,poor loose stool,red tongue and yellow greasy fur,and slippery pulse as the main symptoms of the syndrome,most common in digestive system diseases,among which chronic gastritis is the first.This paper summarized the research results in the past decade and related fields.In the mode of combination of disease and syndrome,based on the principle of corresponding prescription and syndrome,combined with the etiology and pathogenesis evolution of spleen and stomach damp-heat syndrome,the biological connotation of spleen and stomach damp-heat syndrome was explained from various aspects such as inflammation and immune disorders,gastrointestinal motivity disorders,water and humidity loss,endoplasmic reticulum function,and micro-ecological disorders.Enrich the research of the essence of syndrome.
9.The Impact of Visual Impairment on Gait Characteristics in Hemiplegic Patients
Hongshuai LENG ; Qinghua MENG ; Luxing ZHOU ; Nan ZHANG ; Yijie DENG
Journal of Medical Biomechanics 2025;40(5):1200-1206
Objective To explore the impact of vision impairment(VI)on the gait of hemiplegic patients,assess their walking ability and fall risks,and provide a basis for developing effective rehabilitation strategies.Methods Thirty hemiplegic patients were enrolled and stratified by the severity of visual acuity impairment into three groups(unimpaired,mildly impaired,and severely impaired).The gait data of patients under uncorrected vision were collected using the Qualisys motion capture system and the Kistler three-dimensional force platform,and the balance ability of patients was assessed simultaneously.Subsequently,the gait and assessment data were statistically analyzed to compare inter-group differences.Results Compared with the visually unimpaired group,significant differences in step length,symmetry,and walking speed were observed in hemiplegic patients of the mild visual impairment group and severe visual impairment group.As VI increased,gait abnormalities became more pronounced,with a longer double-limb support phase,a longer swing phase of the affected limb,and a shorter single-limb support phase of the affected limb in the gait cycle.Compared with the visually unimpaired group,significant differences in center of pressure(COP)and COP symmetry were found between the mild visual impairment group and severe visual impairment group,with gait abnormalities intensifying.The Berg balance scale(BBS)scores showed that there was a significant difference between the visually unimpaired group and severe visual impairment group,indicating that the group with visual impairment had poorer balance ability.Conclusions VI has a significant negative impact on the gait and walking ability of hemiplegic patients.This study emphasizes the importance of focusing on the impact of VI in the rehabilitation of hemiplegic patients,with regular vision assessments and personalized interventions being conducted,which are of great significance in enhancing patients' walking quality.
10.Research Progress of Animal Model of Spleen and Stomach Damp-Heat Syndrome under the Combination of Disease and Syndrome
Lin YU ; Qinghua GAO ; Yanping ZHOU ; Shuhan ZHOU ; Siyi ZHANG ; Hailin YAN ; Wenliang LYU
World Science and Technology-Modernization of Traditional Chinese Medicine 2025;27(8):2323-2330
Objective To systematically sort out the current situation of animal model construction and evaluation of damp-heat syndrome of spleen and stomach under the pattern of combining disease and evidence,references for optimizing the standardized research of this syndrome were provided.Methods The references in the past 20 years from CNKI,Wanfang,VIP,PubMed and other databases were searched to summarize and analyze the modeling ideas,evaluation systems and problems of the animal models of spleen-stomach damp-heat syndrome.Results Most of the existing models used high-fat and high-sugar feeds combined with hot and humid environment exposure,compound pathogenic microbial infection or chemical stimulation to construct the combined disease and evidence model.The model validity was evaluated by macroscopic signs,gastrointestinal function indexes,inflammatory factors,and intestinal bacterial flora,etc.However,there were still problems of insufficient stability of the model,and inconsistencies in the criteria for evaluation of the evidence.Conclusion The combination of disease and evidence model can better simulate the clinical characteristics of spleen and stomach damp-heat syndrome,but it is necessary to strengthen the construction of multimodal evaluation system and molecular mechanism research.The standardization of animal models can be promoted through the integration of multidisciplinary technology,which can provide a more accurate method for the modernization of traditional Chinese medicine research.

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