ABSTRACT
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.
ABSTRACT
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.
ABSTRACT
To explore the rules of medication for diabetes and diabetic complications based on analysis on 755 traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) prescriptions. The information in 755 papers published from 1995 to 2016 was got including 755 herbal prescriptions, 367 herbs, 33 330 effective cases. Based on the above information, usage frequency of single herb, efficiency and the rules of formulating prescription for different types of diabetes were analyzed and compared using Microsoft Excel 2010 and Clementine 12.0 software. In the treatment of diabetes and its complications, the top four diabetes symptoms are about diabetes, diabetic neurological complications, diabetic nephropathy and diabetic cardiovascular complications, and accounting for 31.62%, 29.82%, 8.87%, and 6.47% of the total number of effective cases. Further analysis of the top four illnesses found that single herb commonly used in the treatment of diabetes was Astragali Radix, Dioscoreae Rhizoma, Rehmanniae Radix, Trichosanthis Radix, Ophiopogonis Radix, etc. The commonly used drugs categories were tonic herbs, heat-clearing herbs and blood activating herbs; The single medicine commonly used in the treatment of diabetic neurological complications was Astragali Radix, Angelicae Sinensis Radix, Chuanxiong Rhizoma, Radix Salviae Miltiorrhizae et Rhizoma, Cinnamomi Ramulus, etc. The commonly used drugs categories were tonic herbs, blood activating herbs and heat-clearing herbs; The single herb commonly used in the treatment of diabetic nephropathy was Astragali Radix, Dioscoreae Rhizoma, Salviae Miltiorrhizae Radix, Poria, Fructus Corni, etc., the commonly used drugs categories were tonic herbs, blood activating herbs and damp-clearing herbs. The single herb commonly used in the treatment of diabetic cardiovascular complications was Astragali Radix, Salviae Miltiorrhizae Radix, Angelicae Sinensis Radix, Carthami Flos, Chuanxiong Rhizoma, etc., the commonly used drugs categories were blood activating herbs, tonic herbs and heat-clearing herbs. The rules of medication of TCM for diabetes, diabetic neurological complications, diabetic nephropathy and diabetic cardiovascular complications showed similar characteristics, tonic herbs were used the most frequently, supplemented by blood activating herbs, heat-clearing herbs and damp-clearing herbs. However, the principle of formula is a little different for different types of diabetes and diabetic complications, specifically. The prescriptions for diabetes and diabetic neurological complications consist of tonic herbs as the principal, supplemented by blood activating herbs and heat-clearing herbs; The prescriptions for diabetic nephropathy are composed of tonic herbs as the principal, supplemented by blood activating herbs and damp-clearing herbs, as well as tonic herbs and blood activating herbs were equal components in the prescriptions for diabetic cardiovascular complications, supplemented by heat-clearing herbs.