Research On The Relationship Between Human Acupoint And Disease Based On Complex Networks

There is a long history that diseases can be treated by acupuncture acupoints. Acupuncture acupoints not only has unique clinical effect, but also has complete theoretical system.With the guidance of the theory,people do clinical practices,and further confirm and develop the theory of acupuncture acupoints. The basis of acupuncture is the theory of meridians and acupoints.In human body,there is a cycle and circular system which can transport the human blood,link the whole body tissues and organs closely and reflect the human physiological and pathological changes.It is the meridian system. Acupoints are special parts of body organs and meridian blood in body surface. They are not isolated points on the surface,but contact and transport between body organs and tissues. Meridians and acupoints correspond to organs inside and outside,thus acupoints, meridians and organs link with each other. Visceral diseases can be reflected by the surface acupoints through the meridians, and acupuncture acupoints or other treatments can treat visceral diseases through meridians.This provides theoretical basis for our study of the acupoint disease system.There are a lot of complex systems in real world. In order to study these complex systems, analyze its static characteristics and evolution, a new theory research method - a complex networks theory approach, was greatly developed and applied.In this paper,we analyze the characteristics of the point disease system using the basis of complex networks and provide a network model according to the characteristics of the point disease network. The main work of this paper is as follows:Firstly,we build a acupoint disease network using the data from acupuncture books, obtain the adjacency matrix and draw diagram of the acupoint disease network.Secondly, we make a projection from the acupoint disease network to the acupoint network based on diseases and the disease network based on acupoints and draw the diagrams of these two networks.Thirdly,we analyze the static characteristics of the acupoint network and the disease network,including clustering coefficient, average path length and clique.Finally,according to the characteristics of the acupoint disease network,we provide a network model, and compare the simulation results with the empirical findings.