| Background:Lung cancer is one of the most common malignancies,which has brought a long-term threat to human health.TCM has a good effect on the treatment of lung cancer by virtue of its unique thoughts of syndrome differentiation and treatment.TCM master Zhou Zhongying advocates the examination of evidence and seeking pathogenesis,and differentiates pathogenesis for treatment.He has very rich and unique experience in the treatment of lung cancer.Various characteristics of complex networks,such as small world,scale-free,and so on,can be found in the clinical medical record data of TCM treatment of lung cancer.Exploring the relationship between the pathogenesis of lung cancer and the corresponding prescriptions of TCM using complex network methods is worth trying,which can be regarded as a promising approach to reveal Zhou Lao’s clinical experience and academic thoughts on diagnosis and treatment of lung cancer.Objective:The main target of this research is to find out the dialectic thinking and the rule of clinical prescription of old Chinese medicine doctors when they treat lung cancer.To achieve this,methods such as complex networks,community discovery,etc.,were carried out to analyze clinical medical records of famous old Chinese medicine practitioners for lung cancer treatment.Whereas,intrinsic relation between single core pathogenesis,core pathogenesis groups and the corresponding prescriptions were explored in a multi-level and multi-angle manner.And on this basis,the basic scheme for lung cancer treatment according to pathogenesis is formed.Methods:(1)Clinical medical record data was standardized using data preprocessing.The terms of pathogenesis and Chinese medicine,the attributes of Chinese medicine were sorted out,and a data storage model was established.(2)Two algorithms,respectively named by SIMIT and DSIMATTR,were developed to establish complex network respectively for entities of pathogenesis and traditional Chinese medicine.Complex network of pathogenesis and traditional Chinese medicine were realized in Python.The rules of lung cancer pathogenesis and clinical prescription of old Chinese medicine doctors were explored by analyzing the network topology parameters.The network was visualized by using Gephi.(3)An algorithm for community discovery,named by NINECQ,was developed to search for community structures in a complex network.The developed algorithm was employed to find out the core TCM communities corresponding to the major pathogenesis,common pathogenesis groups in the treatment of lung cancer in TCM.On this basis,intrinsic relation between lung cancer pathogenesis and clinical prescription of old Chinese medicine doctors were studied.(4)Literature verification method was employed to interpret and analyze the experimental results obtained by the complex network and the community discovery algorithm,where the Chinese medicine research literatures were involved.On this basis,the rules of pathogenesis-prescription medication obtained by using complex network were verified,and it was confirmed that the acquired rules were conformed to the dialectical thinking of Chinese medicine for the lung cancer treatment.Results:(1)This paper screened and sorted out the clinical case data of TCM master Zhou Zhongying in the treatment of lung cancer.A total of 1090 medical records were included in this study,standardized processing of pathological terms and traditional Chinese medicines were retained.The statistics of the pathogenesis of lung cancer indicated that as the first pathogenesis,the top three in the frequency of occurrence were phlegm and blood stasis of lung,phlegm and blood stasis toxin,and heat toxin and phlegm stagnation of lung.Statistical results of the clinical prescription for lung cancer treatment illustrated that there were 10 high-frequency Chinese medicines with a frequency of more than 60%.The five flavors were mainly bitter,sweet and pungent.The four qi were mainly cold and warm.The meridians were mainly liver meridian,lung meridian,spleen meridian,stomach meridian,and kidney meridian.These 10 high-frequency Chinese medicines were mainly used to clear away heat,detoxify,relieve pain,reduce swelling,and resolve phlegm.(2)An algorithm named by SIMIT was developed to construct pathogenesis complex network based on the intimate degree of the network nodes.SIMIT was employed to establish a pathogenesis network on the above mentioned medical record data,where 69 high-frequency pathogenesis nodes and 323 edges were included.Another algorithm named by DSIMATTR was developed to construct the complex network of Chinese medicines for lung cancer treatment based on the attribute similarity of medicines.There were 176 high-frequency traditional Chinese medicine nodes and 1077 edges in the established complex network of Chinese medicine.From the point of view of node degree distribution,these two networks were scale-free networks.The analysis module in Gephi software was employed to visualize the networks,where distribution of the network node degree,clustering coefficients,and feature vector centrality were displayed.(3)Node importance and community effectiveness were defined in this study,based on which,an algorithm named by NINECQ was developed to realize the functionality of community discovery in a complex network.NINECQ was implemented to find out the core pathogenesis community and the traditional Chinese medicine community,which were further used to reveal the prescription rules of famous traditional Chinese medicine doctors for the treatment of lung cancer.(4)According to the five groups of pathogenesis with the highest intimacy value of edge weight in the pathogenesis network,the corresponding complex network of Chinese medicine was constructed and the communities were discovered.The prescription rules of the five pathogenesis groups were explored,and the diagnosis and treatment experience of famous traditional Chinese medicine doctors on lung cancer was summarized.Conclusion:In this paper,based on the data of TCM clinical cases,we put forward the individualized complex network of pathogenesis and complex network of TCM respectively,and the algorithm of community division based on complex network.In the case of TCM Zhou Zhongying’s treatment of lung cancer,these algorithms were used for experimental analysis.The high frequency basic pathogenesis of lung cancer was found,such as deficiency of both Qi and Yin,phlegm and blood stasis binding together,invasion and metastasis of cancer toxin,phlegm stasis depression txoin,heat toxin and phlegm stasis.The TCM communities corresponding to these basic pathogenesis and pathogenesis groups were found respectively.It was verified that Zhou Lao used anti-cancer disinfection,dispelling evils and strengthening positive factors as the key points when treating lung cancer,and used dispelling phlegm and removing blood stasis,nourishing qi and Yin as the principle of medication rules. |
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