Visualization analysis of the international standard ISO/TC 249 for traditional Chinese medicine / 数字中医药（英文）

@#Objective This study proposes to visually review the current situation and progress of standards sets by the International Organization for Standardization/Technical Committee on Traditional Chinese Medicine (ISO/TC 249). The review aims to explore the development strategies of the standards, which will exhibit the considerable impact on the economy, trade and exchanges, and cooperation in the area of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). Methods ISO/TC 249 standards were searched on the ISO website, and their title, proposed time, current stage, scope, and classification were obtained for further summarization. Gephi was utilized to portray the co-occurrence network graph of the ISO/TC 249 standards subject. Results In ISO/TC 249, there were 116 standards, including 81 published standards and 35 developing standards by April 30, 2022. Two withdrawal standards were published after revision, which were not counted in the total standards. The number of published standards has been increasing since the first standard was published in 2014, whose title was “Sterile acupuncture needles for single use”. Among these standards, 17.24% (20/116) standards were in review, 56.03% (65/116) in publication, 3.45% (4/116) in approval, 5.17% (6/116) in enquiry, 3.45% (4/116) in committee, and 14.66% (17/116) in preparation, respectively. With 116 standards, most of the research focused on the medicament, as its classification of the International Classification for Standards (ICS) showed the proportion reaching 49.54%. The network analysis data revealed that the top five most frequent words were “materials” “root” “requirements” “products” and “system”, after removing the noise data, such as prepositions, conjunctions, and pronouns. Additionally, the word “system” co-exists with the terms “computerized” “coding” “image” “tongue” and “analysis”; the word “requirement” co-exists with “manufacturing” “decoction” “process” and “materials”; whereas the word “devices” co-exists with “pulse” “electric” “skin” and “measurement”. Conclusion With the increased diversification and complexity of problems, the development of standards is also oriented to multidisciplinary fields to cultivate the interdisciplinary talents, and especially the international standardization talents of compound TCM. Multi-angle analysis, formulation, and demonstration of standards, in line with industry needs in different disciplines, enhance the availability of standards and the ability to serve the industry.

Acupoint catgut embedding therapy for functional constipation: A protocol for systematic review and meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND: This review will assess current evidence related to the effectiveness and safety of acupoint catgut embedding therapy for functional constipation (FC) and provide efficacy assessments for clinical applications. METHODS: We will search the following databases for relevant trials: PubMed, EMBASE OVID, Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature, OVID MEDLINE, Web of Science, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, Cochrane library, and Scopus. We will also search the following Chinese databases for trials published in the Chinese literature: China National Knowledge Infrastructure Database (CNKI), Chinese Scientific Journals Database, Wan Fang Database, Chinese Biomedicine and other resources from inception to December 2020. Only randomized controlled trials comparing acupoint catgut embedding versus acupuncture or sham acupuncture or placebo or other therapies will be included. The outcomes involved mean spontaneous bowel movements, complete spontaneous bowel movements, the Bristol Stool Form Scale, the Cleveland Clinic Score, Patient Assessment of Constipation symptom and so on. The risk of bias assessment and quality of evidence for outcomes will be appraised using the Cochrane Risk of Bias Tool and the Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development and Evaluation guidelines. RevMan 5.3 software will be employed for the meta-analysis. RESULTS: This work will compare and arrange the comparative efficacy of acupoint catgut embedding with different treatments for FC by summarizing the current evidences. CONCLUSION: The results of this meta-analysis may help doctors determine the best treatments for patients to manage FC. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: This is a protocol with no patient recruitment and personal information collection, approval by the ethics committee is not required. OSF REGISTRATION NUMBER: DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/XTKE2.

The safety and efficacy of astragalus for treating diabetic foot ulcers: A protocol for systematic review and meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND: Diabetic foot ulcers are the most common complication among diabetic patients, which may put the patients in a great danger of amputation. Astragalus as a Chinese herbal medicine has been reported in many publications that it has an efficacy toward diabetic foot ulcers. However, the systematic review and meta-analysis of its efficacy and safety are still absent. Therefore, we aim to evaluate the effectiveness and safety of Astragalus for diabetic foot ulcers. METHODS: The following databases will be searched from January 1st, 2010 to September 2020: The Cochrane Library, Pubmed, EMBASE, Web of Science, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, and Wanfang Data. All the English and Chinese publications will be searched without any restriction of countries. Data will be extracted by 2 reviewers independently. RevMan 5.4.1. will be used to perform analysis and synthesis of data. RESULTS: This meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials will evaluate the efficacy and safety of Astragalus for diabetic foot ulcers during the past 10 years. CONCLUSION: This study will provide an evidence to judge whether Astragalus is effective and safe for diabetic patients with foot ulcers. INPLASY REGISTRATION NUMBER: Inplasy protocol 2020110059. (doi:10.37766/inplasy2020.11.00596).

Efficacy and safety of Buzhong Yiqi decoction combined with surgery for rectal prolapse: A protocol for systematic review and meta analysis.

BACKGROUND: It is extremely easy for rectal prolapse to relapse with surgery alone. Clinical practice indicates that Buzhong Yiqi decoction combined with surgery has certain therapeutic advantages, while there is a lack of evidence-based medicine support. This study aimed to systematically investigate the efficacy and safety of Buzhong Yiqi decoction combined with surgery in the treatment of rectal prolapse. METHODS: The English databases (PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, the Cochrane Library) and Chinese databases (China National Knowledge Infrastructure [CNKI], Wanfang, China Science and Technology Journal Database [VIP], China Biology Medicine disc) were searched by computer. In addition, Baidu Scholar and Google Scholar were searched manually. A randomized controlled clinical study of Buzhong Yiqi decoction combined with surgery in the treatment of rectal prolapse was performed from the establishment of databases to September 2020. Two investigators independently conducted data extraction and assessed the literature quality of the included studies. The Revman5.3 software was used for meta-analysis of the included literature. RESULTS: The efficacy and safety of Buzhong Yiqi decoction combined with surgery in the treatment of rectal prolapse were evaluated in terms of efficiency, symptom score, recurrence rate, adverse reaction rate, and so on. CONCLUSIONS: Thisstudy provides reliable evidence-based support for the clinical application of Buzhong Yiqi decoction combined with surgery in the treatment of rectal prolapse. OSF REGISTRATION NUMBER: DOI: 10.17605/OSF.IO/K3PJX.

Effect of Moxibustion on the Serum Levels of MMP-1, MMP-3, and VEGF in Patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis.

BACKGROUND: Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic inflammatory autoimmune disease, which will eventually lead to joints deformity and functional damage. The aim of this research is to evaluate the effect of moxibustion on the serum indicators related to bone and cartilage metabolism, matrix metalloproteinase 1 (MMP-1), matrix metalloproteinase 3 (MMP-3), and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) in patients with RA and to explore the mechanism of moxibustion in the treatment of RA. METHODS: We recruited 70 RA patients who met the inclusion criteria, and they were randomly divided into two groups, a treatment group and a control group in equal ratio. The control group took methotrexate, folate, or leflunomide orally, while the treatment group received methotrexate, folate, or leflunomide orally and moxibustion at ST36 (Zusanli), BL23 (Shen shu), and Ashi points. We compared the clinical symptoms, RA serological disease markers and serum contents of interleukin-1ß (IL-1ß), tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), MMP-1, MMP-3, and VEGF of RA patients before and after treatment. RESULTS: (1) The clinical symptoms and RA serological disease markers of the two groups improved after treatment (P < 0.05), while the clinical symptoms of the treatment group were significantly improved in comparison with the control group (P < 0.05). (2) The levels of IL-1ß, TNF-α, and VEGF decreased in both groups after treatment (P < 0.05), but the treatment group was significantly decreased compared with the control group (P < 0.05). (3) There were significant differences in MMP-1 and MMP-3 contents after treatment in the treatment group (P < 0.05, P < 0.05), while there were no significant differences in the control group (P > 0.05, P > 0.05). Above all, the contents of IL-1ß, TNF-α, MMP-1, MMP-3, and VEGF in the treatment group decreased more significantly than those in the control group (P < 0.05). CONCLUSION: The improvement effect of moxibustion on the clinical symptoms of RA patients may be related to influence on the contents of IL-1ß, TNF-α, MMP-1, MMP-3, and VEGF, and moxibustion may play a potential role in bone protection.

Network pharmacology based virtual screening of active constituents of Prunella vulgaris L. and the molecular mechanism against breast cancer.

Prunella vulgaris L, a perennial herb widely used in Asia in the treatment of various diseases including cancer. In vitro studies have demonstrated the therapeutic effect of Prunella vulgaris L. against breast cancer through multiple pathways. However, the nature of the biological mechanisms remains unclear. In this study, a Network pharmacology based approach was used to explore active constituents and potential molecular mechanisms of Prunella vulgaris L. for the treatment of breast cancer. The methods adopted included active constituents prescreening, target prediction, GO and KEGG pathway enrichment analysis. Molecular docking experiments were used to further validate network pharmacology results. The predicted results showed that there were 19 active ingredients in Prunella vulgaris L. and 31 potential gene targets including AKT1, EGFR, MYC, and VEGFA. Further, analysis of the potential biological mechanisms of Prunella vulgaris L. against breast cancer was performed by investigating the relationship between the active constituents, target genes and pathways. Network analysis showed that Prunella vulgaris L. exerted a promising preventive effect on breast cancer by acting on tumor-associated signaling pathways. This provides a basis to understand the mechanism of the anti-breast cancer activity of Prunella vulgaris L.

A bibliometric analysis and visualization of medical data mining research.

BACKGROUND: Data mining technology used in the field of medicine has been widely studied by scholars all over the world. But there is little research on medical data mining (MDM) from the perspectives of bibliometrics and visualization, and the research topics and development trends in this field are still unclear. METHODS: This paper has applied bibliometric visualization software tools, VOSviewer 1.6.10 and CiteSpace V, to study the citation characteristics, international cooperation, author cooperation, and geographical distribution of the MDM. RESULTS: A total of 1575 documents are obtained, and the most frequent document type is article (1376). SHAN NH is the most productive author, with the highest number of publications of 12, and the Gillies's article (750 times citation) is the most cited paper. The most productive country and institution in MDM is the USA (559) and US FDA (35), respectively. The Journal of Biomedical Informatics, Expert Systems with Applications and Journal of Medical Systems are the most productive journals, which reflected the nature of the research, and keywords "classification (790)" and "system (576)" have the strongest strength. The hot topics in MDM are drug discovery, medical imaging, vaccine safety, and so on. The 3 frontier topics are reporting system, precision medicine, and inflammation, and would be the foci of future research. CONCLUSION: The present study provides a panoramic view of data mining methods applied in medicine by visualization and bibliometrics. Analysis of authors, journals, institutions, and countries could provide reference for researchers who are fresh to the field in different ways. Researchers may also consider the emerging trends when deciding the direction of their study.