scholarly journals Effect of Traditional Chinese Medicine on Long-Term Outcomes of Snakebite in Taiwan

Toxins ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 132
Author(s):  
Teng-I Huang ◽  
Ching-Liang Hsieh

Herein, we review the characteristics of the six predominant venomous snakes in Taiwan and the effects of traditional Chinese medicine on the long-term outcomes of snakebite venom. We electronically searched databases, including PubMed, ClinicalKey, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, National Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations in Taiwan, and Airiti Library, from their inception to November 2019 by using the following Medical Subject Headings’ keywords: snakebite, long-term, chronic, Chinese medicine, CAM, herb, and Taiwan. The most common long-term effects of snakebite envenomation include “migraine-like syndrome”, brain injuries caused by hypoxia or intracranial hemorrhage, and chronic kidney disease. In addition, hypopituitarism is also worth mentioning. Traditional Chinese medicine can potentially be used in a complementary or alternative treatment for these effects, but additional studies are needed.

2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Yun Zhang ◽  
Yongguo Liu ◽  
Jiajing Zhu ◽  
Zhi Chen ◽  
Dongxiao Li ◽  
...  

Cold pathogenic disease is a widespread disease in traditional Chinese medicine, which includes influenza and respiratory infection associated with high incidence and mortality. Discovering effective core drugs in Chinese medicine prescriptions for treating the disease and reducing patients’ symptoms has attracted great interest. In this paper, we explore the core drugs for curing various syndromes of cold pathogenic disease from large-scale literature. We propose a core drug discovery framework incorporating word embedding and community detection algorithms, which contains three parts: disease corpus construction, drug network generation, and core drug discovery. First, disease corpus is established by collecting and preprocessing large-scale literature about the Chinese medicine treatment of cold pathogenic disease from China National Knowledge Infrastructure. Second, we adopt the Chinese word embedding model SSP2VEC for mining the drug implication implied in the literature; then, a drug network is established by the semantic similarity among drugs. Third, the community detection method COPRA based on label propagation is adopted to reveal drug communities and identify core drugs in the drug network. We compute the community size, closeness centrality, and degree distributions of the drug network to analyse the patterns of core drugs. We acquire 4681 literature from China national knowledge infrastructure. Twelve significant drug communities are discovered, in which the top-10 drugs in every drug community are recognized as core drugs with high accuracy, and four classical prescriptions for treating different syndromes of cold pathogenic disease are discovered. The proposed framework can identify effective core drugs for curing cold pathogenic disease, and the research can help doctors to verify the compatibility laws of Chinese medicine prescriptions.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Tianyi Zhang ◽  
Hui Luo ◽  
Dawei Wei ◽  
Xiaolong Xie ◽  
Cinyu Yang ◽  
...  

Objective. To investigate the correlation between traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) body constitution and ischemic stroke (IS). Methods. Literature search was conducted in databases including Wanfang database, Chongqing VIP, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, Embase, and PubMed from inception to November 16, 2020. Observational studies evaluating the association between TCM body constitution and IS were included for analysis. The distribution of body constitutional types in IS patients was pooled into meta-analysis. The correlation between constitution and IS was presented by the odds ratio (OR) and 95% CI through the comparison between IS and the general population. Results. 41 studies involving 11,211 participants were included. Among the nine constitution types, qi-deficiency constitution (QDC), phlegm-dampness constitution (PDC), and blood stasis constitution (BSC) are the common types, accounting for 25% [0.22, 0.29], 23% [0.20, 0.29], and 17% [0.13, 0.22], respectively, in IS patients. The proportion of PDC and QDC among IS patients is 2.34 times and 3.47 times higher than that in the general population, respectively (OR and 95% CI: 2.34 [1.39, 3.94], 3.47 [1.61, 7.50], respectively). Conclusion. PDC and QDC are the common constitutions in IS patients and may have a potential correlation with the incidence of IS. Due to the low or moderate quality of included studies, more well-designed prospective studies are warranted to further evaluate the relationship between TCM constitutions and IS.


2009 ◽  
Vol 37 (02) ◽  
pp. 207-213 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hui Zhao ◽  
Xia Wan ◽  
Jia-Xu Chen

To systematically evaluate the effectiveness of Chinese herbal medicine for treating depression in China, the electronic medical database from China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) was searched using Chinese and the date is set, from 1st January 1994 to 1st August 2008. The 18 studies that met the entry criteria along with 1,260 randomized patients were included in this review. All studies with words like "randomization" or "quasi-randomization" in their abstracts were included, whether they used blinding or not. The results showed that the Chinese medicine treated group did not decrease the scores of the self-rating depression scale (-1.02, 95% CI -2.16 ~ 0.12, p = 0.08) and the scores of the Hamilton depression scale (-0.45, 95% CI -0.98 ~ 0.08, p = 0.10). The results showed there is no evidence to support that traditional Chinese medicine for depression has improved, which may be due to the low quality in all the trials. Therefore, more qualified, randomized controlled clinical trials are warranted to assure its efficacy.


Author(s):  
Teresa Zetzl ◽  
Andre Pittig ◽  
Agnes Renner ◽  
Birgitt van Oorschot ◽  
Elisabeth Jentschke

Abstract Objective To examine the efficacy of reminder e-mails to continue yoga therapy on practice frequency and fatigue in cancer patients and long-term effects of yoga on fatigue, depression, and quality of life. Methodology One hundred two cancer patients who completed an 8-week yoga therapy were randomly allocated to two groups: reminder (N = 51) vs. no-reminder group (N = 51). After completing yoga therapy, the reminder group received weekly e-mails for 24 weeks, which reminded them of practicing yoga, whereas the no-reminder group did not. Primary outcomes were fatigue and practice frequency, and long-term outcomes were fatigue, depression, and quality of life. Data were assessed using questionnaires after yoga therapy (T1) and 6 months after completing yoga therapy (T2). Result A significantly stronger reduction of general (p = 0.038, d = 0.42) and emotional fatigue (p = 0.004, d = 0.59) and a higher increase of practice frequency (p = 0.015, d = 0.52) between T1 and T2 were found for the reminder group compared to the no-reminder group. In the mediation model, practice frequency as a mediator partially explained the changes in emotional fatigue (indirect effect B =  − 0.10). Long-term effects of yoga therapy regarding fatigue, depression, and quality of life were found (F > 7.46, p < 0.001, d > 0.54). Conclusion Weekly reminder e-mails after yoga therapy can positively affect general and emotional fatigue and help cancer patients with fatigue establish a regular yoga practice at home. However, higher practice frequency did not lead to higher physical or cognitive fatigue improvement, suggesting other factors that mediate efficacy on physical or cognitive fatigue, such as mindfulness or side effects of therapy.


2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tian-Yi Cheng ◽  
Jia-Xin Li ◽  
Jing-Yi Chen ◽  
Pei-Ying Chen ◽  
Lin-Rui Ma ◽  
...  

AbstractCoronary heart disease (CHD) is a common ischaemic heart disease whose pathological mechanism has not been fully elucidated. Single target drugs, such as antiplatelet aggregation, coronary artery dilation and lipid-lowering medicines, can relieve some symptoms clinically but cannot effectively prevent and treat CHD. Accumulating evidence has revealed that alterations in GM composition, diversity, and richness are associated with the risk of CHD. The metabolites of the gut microbiota (GM), including trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO), short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) and bile acids (BAs), affect human physiology by activating numerous signalling pathways. Due to the advantage of multiple components and multiple targets, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) can intervene in CHD by regulating the composition of the GM, reducing TMAO, increasing SCFAs and other CHD interventions. We have searched PubMed, Web of science, Google Scholar Science Direct, and China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), with the use of the keywords “gut microbiota, gut flora, traditional Chinese medicine, herbal medicine, coronary heart disease”. This review investigated the relationship between GM and CHD, as well as the intervention of TCM in CHD and GM, and aims to provide valuable insights for the treatments of CHD by TCM.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leon Teo ◽  
Anthony G. Boghdadi ◽  
Jihane Homman-Ludiye ◽  
Iñaki Carril-Mundiñano ◽  
William C. Kwan ◽  
...  

AbstractInfants and adults respond differently to brain injuries. Specifically, improved neuronal sparing along with reduced astrogliosis and glial scarring often observed earlier in life, likely contributes to improved long-term outcomes. Understanding the underlying mechanisms could enable the recapitulation of neuroprotective effects, observed in infants, to benefit adult patients after brain injuries. We reveal that in primates, Eph/ ephrin signaling contributes to age-dependent reactive astrocyte behavior. Ephrin-A5 expression on astrocytes was more protracted in adults, whereas ephrin-A1 was associated only with infant astrocytes. Furthermore, ephrin-A5 exacerbated major hallmarks of astrocyte reactivity via EphA2 and EphA4 receptors, which was subsequently alleviated by ephrin-A1. Rather than suppressing reactivity, ephrin-A1 signaling shifted astrocytes towards GAP43+ neuroprotection, accounting for improved neuronal sparing in infants. Reintroducing ephrin-A1 after middle-aged ischemic stroke significantly attenuated glial scarring, improved neuronal sparing and preserved circuitry. Therefore, beneficial infant mechanisms can be recapitulated in adults to improve outcomes after CNS injuries.


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