Abstract
ObjectiveThe goal of this study was to systematically summarize and categorize the syndrome differentiation, medication rules, and acupoint therapy in the domestic traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) literature on type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), such that guidelines and new insights can be provided for future practitioners and researchers.MethodsTaking randomized controlled trials (RCTs) on the treatment of T2DM in TCM as the research theme, we searched for full-text literature in three major clinical databases, including CNKI, Wan Fang, and VIP, published between 1990 and 2020. We then conducted frequency statistics, cluster analysis, association rules extraction, and topic modeling based on a corpus of medical academic words extracted from 3,654 research articles.ResultsThe TCM syndrome types, subjective symptoms, objective indicators, Chinese herbal medicine, acupuncture points, and TCM prescriptions for T2DM were compiled based on invigorating the kidney and Qi, nourishing Yin, and strengthening the spleen. Most TCM syndrome differentiation for T2DM was identified as “Zhongxiao” (the lesion in the spleen and stomach) and “Xiaxiao” (the lesion in the kidney) deficiency syndromes, and most medications and acupoint therapies were focused on the “Spleen Channel” and “Kidney Channel.” However, stagnation of liver Qi was mentioned less when compared with other syndromes, which did not have symptomatic medicines.ConclusionThis study provides an in-depth perspective for the TCM syndrome differentiation, medication rules, and acupoint therapy for T2DM and provides practitioners and researchers with valuable information about the current status and frontier trends of TCM research on T2DM in terms of both diagnosis and treatment.
Highlights
Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is a chronic endocrine and metabolic disorder characterized by either reduced insulin production or insulin resistance resulting in drastically increased blood glucose levels [1]
From the close observation of frequencies of various symptoms, we found that the nature of the lesion had been focused on deficiencies in multiple energy metabolism systems, and the lesion sites were concentrated in the “spleen” and “kidney.”
natural language process (NLP) technology and data mining methodologies were used to sort out the subject symptoms, classification of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) syndromes, and treatment methods for T2DM based on unstructured data of Randomized controlled trials (RCTs), to make innovative attempts in technical methods and provide a basis for future clinical data research and methodological research
Summary
Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is a chronic endocrine and metabolic disorder characterized by either reduced insulin production or insulin resistance resulting in drastically increased blood glucose levels [1]. Routine treatment with tang-min-ling pills, a combination of ten Chinese herbal medicines, can significantly improve the insulin secretion by pancreatic b cells and reduce the level of fasting blood glucose and glycosylated hemoglobin in patients with diabetes (PMID: 23231379). Since TCM treatments rely greatly on the syndrome differentiation, they, can formulate the most effective personalized herbal medicine regimen. This strategy has shown potential efficacy in treating T2DM and related disorders in several studies (PMID: 16466178, PMID: 7841750, PMID: 11783182)
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