Knowledge structure of lumbago's symptoms and employed acupoints in book A-B Classic of Acupuncture and Moxibustion and Compendium of Acupuncture and Moxibustion based on Weka preprocessing association rules

Abstract

To dig the knowledge structure of lumbago's symptoms and acupoints in book Zhenjiu Jiayi Jing (A-B Classic of Acupuncture and Moxibustion) and Zhenjiu Dacheng (Compendium of Acupuncture and Moxibustion) in order to provide a possible scientific method for exploring their combination regularities in ancient Chinese medical books about acupuncture-moxibustion, and to investigate the feasibility and scientificity of the "association rule" in trimming the related ancient medical books and records. The articles about lumbago's symptoms and employed acupoints were screened from classic me-dical book Zhenjiu Jiayi Jing and Zhenjiu Dacheng, followed by establishing a database. Then, the bidimensional correlation analysis about the lumbago-symptoms and symptoms-acupoints was conducted by using Apriori algorithm of Weka3.9.0 platform. A total of 153 entries about symptoms as spinalgia (31.68%) and cold limbs (25.74%) and the employed acupoints as Weizhong (BL40，17.60%), Shenshu (BL23, 9.60%) and Kunlun (BL60, 6.40%) are found. The top 3 supplemented acupoints are BL40 for concomitant symptoms of spinalgia, BL23 for cold limbs, and BL60 for dizzy symptoms. Regarding the paired acupoints for lumbago, the most frequently used ones are BL23-BL40 (30.40%)．. In book Zhenjiu Jiayi Jing and Zhenjiu Dacheng, lumbago has chief symptoms of spinalgia and cold limbs that are mainly disorders of the Bladder Meridian of Foot Taiyang and Governor Vessel, and the acupoints of these two meridians are frequently selected in combination with some specific acupoints.