Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China.
Institute of Chinese Materia Medica, China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, Beijing 100700, China.
Evid Based Complement Alternat Med. 2013;2013:595924. doi: 10.1155/2013/595924. Epub 2013 Nov 28.
Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has shown significant efficacy in the treatment of cough variant asthma (CVA), a special type of asthma. However, there is shortage of explanations for relevant mechanism of treatment. As Zhengs differentiation is a critical concept in TCM, it is necessary to explain the mechanism of treatment of Zhengs. Based on TCM clinical cases, this study illustrated the mechanism of the treatment of three remarkably relevant Zhengs for CVA: "FengXieFanFei," "FeiQiShiXuan", and "QiDaoLuanJi." To achieve this goal, five steps were carried out: (1) determining feature Zhengs and corresponding key herbs of CVA by analyses of clinical cases; (2) finding out potential targets of the key herbs and clustering them based on their functional annotations; (3) constructing an ingredient-herb network and an ingredient network; (4) identifying modules of the ingredient network; (5) illustrating the mechanism of the treatment by further mining the latent biological implications within each module. The systematic study reveals that the treatment of "FengXieFanFei," "FeiQiShiXuan," and "QiDaoLuanJi" has effects on the regulation of multiple bioprocesses by herbs containing different ingredients with functions of steroid metabolism regulation, airway inflammation, and ion conduction and transportation. This network-based systematic study will be a good way to boost the scientific understanding of mechanism of the treatment of Zhengs.
中医（TCM）在治疗咳嗽变异性哮喘（CVA）方面显示出显著的疗效，CVA 是一种特殊类型的哮喘。然而，其治疗机制的解释还不够充分。由于证型辨证是中医的一个关键概念，因此有必要解释证型的治疗机制。基于中医临床病例，本研究说明了三种与 CVA 显著相关的证型的治疗机制：“风邪犯肺”、“肺气失宣”和“气机紊乱”。为了实现这一目标，我们进行了以下五个步骤：（1）通过分析临床病例确定 CVA 的特征证型和相应的关键草药；（2）根据功能注释找出关键草药的潜在靶点并对其进行聚类；（3）构建成分-草药网络和成分网络；（4）识别成分网络的模块；（5）通过进一步挖掘每个模块中的潜在生物学意义来阐明治疗机制。系统研究表明，“风邪犯肺”、“肺气失宣”和“气机紊乱”的治疗作用是通过含有不同成分的草药对多种生物过程的调节实现的，这些草药具有类固醇代谢调节、气道炎症和离子传导和运输等功能。这种基于网络的系统研究将是深入了解证型治疗机制的一种很好的方法。
