An Apriori Algorithm-Based Association Analysis of Analgesic Drugs in Chinese Medicine Prescriptions Recorded From Patients With Rheumatoid Arthritis Pain.

Chronic pain, a common symptom of people with rheumatoid arthritis, usually behaves as persistent polyarthralgia pain and causes serious damage to patients' physical and mental health. Opioid analgesics can lead to a series of side effects like drug tolerance and addiction. Thus, seeking an alternative therapy and screening out the corresponding analgesic drugs is the key to solving the current dilemma. Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) therapy has been recognized internationally for its unique guiding theory and definite curative effect. In this study, we used the Apriori Algorithm to screen out potential analgesics from 311 cases that were treated with compounded medication prescription and collected from "Second Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang Chinese Medical University" in Hangzhou, China. Data on 18 kinds of clinical symptoms and 16 kinds of Chinese herbs were extracted based on this data mining. We also found 17 association rules and screened out four potential analgesic drugs-"Jinyinhua," "Wugong," "Yiyiren," and "Qingfengteng," which were promised to help in the clinical treatment. Besides, combined with System Cluster Analysis, we provided several different herbal combinations for clinical references.

Guidelines on the treatment with integrated traditional Chinese medicine and western medicine for severe coronavirus disease 2019.

Severe Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) is characterized by numerous complications, complex disease, and high mortality, making its treatment a top priority in the treatment of COVID-19. Integrated traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and western medicine played an important role in the prevention, treatment, and rehabilitation of COVID-19 during the epidemic. However, currently there are no evidence-based guidelines for the integrated treatment of severe COVID-19 with TCM and western medicine. Therefore, it is important to develop an evidence-based guideline on the treatment of severe COVID-19 with integrated TCM and western medicine, in order to provide clinical guidance and decision basis for healthcare professionals, public health personnel, and scientific researchers involved in the diagnosis, treatment, and care of COVID-19 patients. We developed and completed the guideline by referring to the standardization process of the "WHO handbook for guideline development", the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) system, and the Reporting Items for Practice Guidelines in Healthcare (RIGHT).

Cytotoxic and antioxidant dihydrobenzofuran neolignans from the seeds of Crataegus pinnatifida.

Eight new dihydrobenzofuran neolignans, pinnatifidanin C I-VIII (1-8), together with two known analogs (9-10) were isolated from the seeds of Crataegus pinnatifida. Their structures were elucidated by spectroscopic analyses, especially 1D, 2D NMR and CD spectra. The cytotoxic activities of all isolates against human cancer cell lines were assayed, and most interestingly, compound 10 revealed preferred cytotoxicity on the HT-1080 cell line and displayed much stronger inhibitory activity (IC50=8.86 µM) compared with positive control 5-fluorouracil (IC50=35.62 µM). Meanwhile, antioxidant activities of all the isolates were evaluated using 2,2-diphenyl-1-pikrylhydrazyl (DPPH) and 2,2'-azino-bis(3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulphonic acid) (ABTS) assays, and the results showed that most of the isolates exhibited potent antioxidant activity.