Traditional chinese medicine zheng in the era of evidence-based medicine: a literature analysis.

Miao Jiang,Li Li,Cheng Lu,Guang Zheng,Chi Zhang,Hongtao Guo,Aiping Lu,Wei Jia,Jing Yang

doi:10.1155/2012/409568

Abstract

Zheng, which is also called a syndrome or pattern, is the basic unit and a key concept of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) theory. Zheng can be considered a further stratification of patients when it is integrated with biomedical diagnoses in clinical practice to achieve higher efficacies. In an era of evidence-based medicine, confronted with the vast and increasing volume of TCM data, there is an urgent need to explore these resources effectively using techniques of knowledge discovery in databases. The application of effective data mining in the analysis of multiple extensively integrated databases can supply new information about TCM Zheng research. In this paper, we screened the published literature on TCM Zheng-related studies in the SinoMed and PubMed databases with a novel data mining approach to obtain an overview of the Zheng research landscape in the hope of contributing to a better understanding of TCM Zheng in the era of evidence-based medicine. In our results, contrast was found in Zheng in different studies, and several determinants of Zheng were identified. The data described in this paper can be used to assess Zheng research studies based on the title and certain characteristics of the abstract. These findings will benefit modern TCM Zheng-related studies and guide future Zheng study efforts.

Highlights

In traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) theory, Zheng, which is called a syndrome or pattern, is the basic unit and a key concept
266,160 Chinese-language studies on TCM Zheng were obtained from the SinoMed database, and 28,103 English-language studies were obtained from PubMed
Based on our analysis of the literature, it seems that TCM Zheng-related studies will attract increasing interest worldwide, and more TCM Zheng studies will occur in the near future

Summary

Introduction

In traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) theory, Zheng, which is called a syndrome or pattern, is the basic unit and a key concept. TCM Zheng is the abstraction of a major disharmonious pathogenesis, which is identified from a comprehensive analysis of clinical information from four main diagnostic TCM methods: observation, listening, questioning, and pulse analyses [1]. All diagnostic and therapeutic methods in TCM are based on the differentiation of TCM Zheng, a concept that has been used in China for over 3,000 years [2, 3]. TCM Zheng can be understood as a guideline for patient classification in clinical practice from an alternate viewpoint/dimension compared to a biomedical disease diagnosis. A TCM Zheng diagnosis is integrated with a biomedical diagnosis in clinical practice, and integrative medicine emerges as an optimal approach for achieving higher efficacy [1]

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