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Background. Symptoms and signs (symptoms in brief) are the essential clinical manifestations for individualized diagnosis and treatment in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). To gain insights into the molecular mechanism of symptoms, we develop a computational approach to identify the candidate genes of symptoms. Methods. This paper presents a network-based approach for the integrated analysis of multiple phenotype-genotype data sources and the prediction of the prioritizing genes for the associated symptoms. The method first calculates the similarities between symptoms and diseases based on the symptom-disease relationships retrieved from the PubMed bibliographic database. Then the disease-gene associations and protein-protein interactions are utilized to construct a phenotype-genotype network. The PRINCE algorithm is finally used to rank the potential genes for the associated symptoms. Results. The proposedmethod gets reliable gene rank list with AUC (area under curve) 0.616 in classification. Some novel genes like CALCA, ESR1, and MTHFR were predicted to be associated with headache symptoms, which are not recorded in the benchmark data set, but have been reported in recent published literatures. Conclusions. Our study demonstrated that by integrating phenotype-genotype relationships into a complex network framework it provides an effective approach to identify candidate genes of symptoms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Chinese herbal medicine is one of the most popular Chinese medicine (CM) therapies for primary insomnia. One of the important characteristics of CM is that different Chinese clinicians give different prescriptions even for the same patient. However, there must be some fixed drug patterns in every clinician's prescriptions. This study aims to screen the effective core drug patterns in primary insomnia treatment of three prestigious Chinese clinicians. Methods/design: A triple-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled, parallel-group clinical trial will be performed. Three clinicians will diagnose and treat every eligible patient individually and independently, producing three prescriptions from three clinicians for every patient. Patients will equally be randomized to one of four groups - medical group A, medical group B, medical group C, or placebo group - and observed for efficacy of treatment. The sample will include primary insomnia patients meeting DSM IV-TR criteria, Spiegel scale score >18, and age 18 to 65 years. A sequential design is employed. Interim analysis will be conducted when between 80 and 160 patients complete the study. The interim study could be stopped and treated as final if a statistically significant difference between treatment and placebo groups can be obtained and core effective drug patterns can be determined. Otherwise, the study continues until the maximum sample size reaches 300. Treatment of the CM group is one of three Chinese clinicians' prescriptions, who provide independently prescriptions based on their own CM theory and the patient's disease condition. Assessment will be by sleep diary and Pittsburgh sleep quality index, and CM symptoms and signs will be measured. Primary outcome is total sleep time. Assessment will be carried out at the washout period, weeks 1, 2, 3, and 4 and 4th week after the end of treatment. Effectiveness analysis will be per intent to treat. A multi-dimension association rule and scale-free networks method will be used to explore the effective core drug patterns. Discussion: The effective core drug patterns will be found through analyzing several prestigious CM clinicians' treatment information. Screening the effective core drug patterns from prestigious clinicians can accelerate the development of new CM drugs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective. Initial optimized prescription of Chinese herb medicine for unstable angina (UA). Methods. Based on partially observable Markov decision process model (POMDP), we choose hospitalized patients of 3 syndrome elements, such as qi deficiency, blood stasis, and turbid phlegm for the data mining, analysis, and objective evaluation of the diagnosis and treatment of UA at a deep level in order to optimize the prescription of Chinese herb medicine for UA. Results. The recommended treatment options of UA for qi deficiency, blood stasis, and phlegm syndrome patients were as follows: Milkvetch Root + Tangshen + Indian Bread + Largehead Atractylodes Rhizome (ADR = 0.96630); Danshen Root + Chinese Angelica + Safflower + Red Peony Root + Szechwan Lovage Rhizome Orange Fruit (ADR = 0.76); Snakegourd Fruit + Longstamen Onion Bulb + Pinellia Tuber + Dried Tangerine peel + Largehead Atractylodes Rhizome + Platycodon Root (ADR = 0.658568). Conclusion. This study initially optimized prescriptions for UA based on POMDP, which can be used as a reference for further development of UA prescription in Chinese herb medicine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The microbiota living in the human body has critical impacts on our health and disease, but a systems understanding of its relationships with disease remains limited. Here, we use a large-scale text mining-based manually curated microbe-disease association data set to construct a microbe-based human disease network and investigate the relationships between microbes and disease genes, symptoms, chemical fragments and drugs. We reveal that microbe-based disease loops are significantly coherent. Microbe-based disease connections have strong overlaps with those constructed by disease genes, symptoms, chemical fragments and drugs. Moreover, we confirm that the microbe-based disease analysis is able to predict novel connections and mechanisms for disease, microbes, genes and drugs. The presented network, methods and findings can be a resource helpful for addressing some issues in medicine, for example, the discovery of bench knowledge and bedside clinical solutions for disease mechanism understanding, diagnosis and therapy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a multicenter prospective cohort study to analyze the correlation of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) syndrome evolvement and cardiovascular events in patients with stable coronary heart disease (CHD). The impact of syndrome evolvement on cardiovascular events during the 6-month and 12-month follow-up was analyzed using complex networks approach. Results of verification using Chi-square test showed that the occurrence of cardiovascular events was positively correlated with syndrome evolvement when it evolved from toxic syndrome to Qi deficiency, blood stasis, or sustained toxic syndrome, when it evolved from Qi deficiency to blood stasis, toxic syndrome, or sustained Qi deficiency, and when it evolved from blood stasis to Qi deficiency. Blood stasis, Qi deficiency, and toxic syndrome are important syndrome factors for stable CHD. There are positive correlations between cardiovascular events and syndrome evolution from toxic syndrome to Qi deficiency or blood stasis, from Qi deficiency to blood stasis, or toxic syndrome and from blood stasis to Qi deficiency. These results indicate that stable CHD patients with pathogenesis of toxin consuming Qi, toxin leading to blood stasis, and mutual transformation of Qi deficiency and blood stasis are prone to recurrent cardiovascular events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background. The characteristics of treatment based on syndrome differentiation (TBSD) cause great challenges to evaluate the effectiveness of the clinical methods. Objectives. This paper aims to evaluate the influence of physician to personalized medicine in the process of TBSD. Methods. We performed a randomized, triple-blind trial involving patients of primary insomnia treated by 3 physicians individually and independently. The patients (n = 30) were randomly assigned to receive treatments by the 3 physicians for every visit. However, they always received the treatment, respectively, prescribed by the physician at the first visit. The primary outcome was evaluated, respectively, by the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) and the TCM symptoms measuring scale. The clinical practices of the physicians were recorded at every visit including diagnostic information, syndrome differentiation, treating principles, and prescriptions. Results. All patients in the 3 groups (30 patients) showed significant improvements (>66%) according to the PSQI and TCM symptoms measuring scale. Conclusion. The results indicate that although with comparable effectiveness, there exist significant differences in syndrome differentiation, the treating principles, and the prescriptions of the approaches used by the 3 physicians. This means that the physician should be considered as an important factor for individualized medicine and the related TCM clinical research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]