The severe debility and immune dysfunction associated with serious disease may respond well to treatment with the tonic formulas from Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). One of these, Ginseng and Dang Gui Ten Combination has gained prominence as the formula most suitable to assist convalescence after chemotherapy and radiotherapy. A literature review of the herbal combination suggests that it synergistically provides a broad range of pharmacological activity with a very low level of toxicity. The herbs may have haemopoietic, antimutagenic, antitumour, immunomodulatory and anticomplement activities and they seem to promote lymphocyte activation, interleukin production, protect various organs against toxicity, inflammation and ulceration, and promote drug delivery and radiation sensitising while protecting healthy tissue. The specific immunomodulatory effects of PS10 combination were investigated in 10 healthy volunteers (7 males and 3 females aged 43 to 58 years). The study was a longitudinal study (28 days), using a repeated measures design to investigate the pre and then post intervention changes in Natural Killer (NK) cell activity as well as total and differentiated lymphocyte counts. Furthermore, liver function tests (LFT) were included to assess any adverse effects on the liver. It was envisaged that NK cells or other white blood cell subset variation could indicate an immunomodulatory effect of the herbal formulation, PS10. Investigative methodologies included NK cell function assessment via the ability of peripheral blood lymphocytes (PBL) to lyse the human erythroleukemia cell line K562.(Lozzio and Lozzio, 1975) Target cells are labelled by incubation with radioactive chromium, washed, then added to a dilution series of PBMC's and incubated for 4 hours. Supernatants are harvested and the amount of intracellular chromium- 51 released into the supernatant is measured with a gamma counter. The amount of chromium-51 released is proportional to the lytic activity of the NK cells. The gradient of the line of best fit through the plotted points was recorded as the measure of cytotoxicity or killing.(Brooks and Flannery, 1980) The steeper the gradient, the greater the cytotoxicity. This pilot study demonstrated that the herbal preparation Ginseng and Dang Gui Ten Combination (PS10) increased the total number of lymphocytes cells in healthy human volunteers (n=10) (p&lt0.007). Although the test formulation increased NK cell activity in some participants, the change in mean NK cell cytotoxicity was not significant.

No description available.

The process of pulse diagnosis was examined in a sample of 100 patients randomly selected from the author's acupuncture clinic. Patient symptoms, pulses (as utilised in traditional Chinese medicine), diagnostic criteria (as described in traditional Chinese medicine), acupuncture points selected and patient comments after each treatment were coded into a numerical format suitable for stepwise multiple regression and crosstabulation analysis. The analysis indicated that the interpretation of pulse qualities predicted the diagnostic criteria when used in accordance with the theories of acupuncture. The selection of acupuncture points could not be predicted from the diagnostic criteria when using pulse diagnosis. Additionally the analysis indicated that the patient comments after acupuncture were independent of the initial patient symptoms. More research is needed to more fully understand the process of pulse diagnosis. However the analysis does suggest that pulse diagnosis should be incorporated into acupuncture curricula in both traditional acupuncture courses and medical acupuncture courses.

In the face of the transition of Chinese medicine, the older generation has idea of the older generation, younger generation have younger generation's ideas, a lot of thing mind to fault, just among evolution, like puppet show either, make a reservation in having traditional skill of history and culture, how should change, innovate, the feeling making the modern different, everybody has faced a lot of challenges and struggled. Facing it while making the transition, the yellow document is being selected and yellow and gentle and strong in the face of father Huang JunXiong, believe their conflict, believe it is unavoidable too, so when we see their only fresh and beautiful appearance, in fact privately, impact, agony they receive, it is person of us that watch, and the family and undertaking that I face, perhaps there are a lot of similar places with the thunderbolt puppet show. Traditional Chinese medicine has curative effect, but will not injure the body, have concept of keeping in good health, what institutes of Chinese medicine made present, let the people think it has history, educated, the modernization is managed, how then how the present Chinese medicine institutes it goes to innovate to let, let the people think it has history, educated, there is the modernization that is managed, represent the different vitality, in fact, these it is I that make for thesis spirit of research of me horse mere Chinese medicine medical development of network.

Yes / Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is an individualized medicine by observing the symptoms and signs (symptoms in brief) of patients. We aim to extract the meaningful herb-symptom relationships from large scale TCM clinical data. To investigate the correlations between symptoms and herbs held for patients, we use four clinical data sets collected from TCM outpatient clinical settings and calculate the similarities between patient pairs in terms of the herb constituents of their prescriptions and their manifesting symptoms by cosine measure. To address the large-scale multiple testing problems for the detection of herb-symptom associations and the dependence between herbs involving similar efficacies, we propose a network-based correlation analysis (NetCorrA) method to detect the herb-symptom associations. The results show that there are strong positive correlations between symptom similarity and herb similarity, which indicates that herb-symptom correspondence is a clinical principle adhered to by most TCM physicians. Furthermore, the NetCorrA method obtains meaningful herb-symptom associations and performs better than the chi-square correlation method by filtering the false positive associations. Symptoms play significant roles for the prescriptions of herb treatment. The herb-symptom correspondence principle indicates that clinical phenotypic targets (i.e., symptoms) of herbs exist and would be valuable for further investigations.

Charles University Faculty of Pharmacy in Hradec Králové Department of Pharmaceutical Botany and Ecology Candidate: Martina Vítková Supervisor: RNDr. Jitka Vytlačilová, Ph.D. Title of diploma thesis: The biological activity of the selected drugs of traditional Chinese medicine The subject of this diploma thesis was to prepare aqueous extracts of five selected drugs from traditional Chinese medicine and deal with their biological effects. Namely it was Magnoliae officinalis cortex, Houttuyniae herba, Paeoniae radix alba, Psoraleae fructus and Typhae pollen. These drugs have a high potential for use in our medicine due to their beneficial effects on the human organism. The theoretical part contains a description of individual drugs and their therapeutic effects. Also there are described methods of toxicity testing. The experimental part describes the course of the acute toxicity test of used drugs on the model organism Artemia salina. LC50 was used as the endpoint. Testing with Artemia salina showed low toxicity of the tested drugs. For Magnoliae officinalis cortex the LC50 was found to be 0,6613 mg/ml, Psoraleae fructus 1,777mg/ml, Houttuyniae herba 4,079 mg/ml and Typhae pollen 4,34 mg/ml. No toxicity was detected for Paeoniae radix alba even at the highest measured concentration which was 15...

Chinese Herbal Medicine has been mainstream practice for hundreds of generations, however the merits of herbal therapeutics have been debated in the era of modern medicine. With a shift towards scientific analysis and rigorous testing of conventional pharmaceuticals in the past century, critics have questioned the proclaimed effects of herbal concoctions. Nonetheless, herbal medicines are still used frequently and have spawned clinical studies meant to determine their therapeutic efficacy. This paper aims to evaluate many aspects of Chinese Herbal Medicine applications that have already been analyzed in other papers, then propose a study which explores the effects of the herbal concoction Ban Xia Bai Zhu Tian Ma Pian in lowering blood pressure. Hypertension was chosen as the focus of the study due to its extensive presence in the population and the impact a significant outcome can provide given its prevalence. The ultimate goal is to find a balance between both eastern and western practices of medicine, thus preserving Chinese medical traditions that are concurrently buttressed by scientific research.

No / Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) investigates the clinical diagnosis and treatment regularities in a typical schema of personalized medicine, which means that individualized patients with same diseases would obtain distinct diagnosis and optimal treatment from different TCM physicians. This principle has been recognized and adhered by TCM clinical practitioners for thousands of years. However, the underlying mechanisms of TCM personalized medicine are not fully investigated so far and remained unknown. This paper discusses framework of TCM personalized medicine in classic literatures and in real-world clinical settings, and investigates the underlying mechanisms of TCM personalized medicine from the perspectives of network medicine. Based on 246 well-designed outpatient records on insomnia, by evaluating the personal biases of manifestation observation and preferences of herb prescriptions, we noted significant similarities between each herb prescriptions and symptom similarities between each encounters. To investigate the underlying mechanisms of TCM personalized medicine, we constructed a clinical phenotype network (CPN), in which the clinical phenotype entities like symptoms and diagnoses are presented as nodes and the correlation between these entities as links. This CPN is used to investigate the promiscuous boundary of syndromes and the co-occurrence of symptoms. The small-world topological characteristics are noted in the CPN with high clustering structures, which provide insight on the rationality of TCM personalized diagnosis and treatment. The investigation on this network would help us to gain understanding on the underlying mechanism of TCM personalized medicine and would propose a new perspective for the refinement of the TCM individualized clinical skills.

Chinese medicine is one of China's key national assets, an indigenous medical knowledge and practices that serves Chinese for thousands of years. As very little research has been focused on Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) from systems of innovation perspective, the topic of study was chosen. This qualitative case study research introduces, defines and explores how TCM organisations collaborate to innovate from an evolutionary, interactive system perspective. In particular, the focus is on the development of knowledge and capabilities related to TCM drug research and production. Thirty one TCM organisation cases were analysed and presented in this study, interpreting their behaviour in terms of ideas drawn mainly from the literatures on systems of innovation, collaboration between organisations and resource (knowledge) based theory of the firm. Actors such as government play various roles in facilitating organisational and sectoral innovation processes. 'Various policy instruments', in particular research funding and institutions (e.g., standards and regulations) were used to enhance innovation and production. Various forms of collaborative networks were found among key actors: enterprises, universities, research organisations and end users. They contribute to the active innovation processes of 'Identification, Selection, Integration and Creation' of tangible and intangible outcomes and changes. Based on the research, new insights were derived as to how indigenous resources (defined as original and/or traditional knowledge and capabilities) may lead to indigenous innovation. This thesis contributes to the academic understanding of systems of innovation operating in the context of indigenous product and related process developments with reference to various actors interplaying in complex networks (systems) of collaborations. New understandings made on the processes of indigenous innovation (using TCM as a case) through investigating the actors' roles, inter-relations and their restless attempts to identify opportunities and problems, select and integrate different indigenous, scientific, technological and managerial knowledge, capabilities, resources and institutions, to create value that may 'fit' in evolutionary terms, the demand of the key actors in the sector.

Background: Respiratory conditions are prevalent and cause an enormous burden on society. In recent decades, there has been a global increase in asthma in children and adults, yet the diagnosis of asthma must be made on clinical grounds as the diagnostic use of pharmacological reversibility of airway obstruction remains controversial. It is possible however that tools exist from different medical paradigms that may assist in the clinical diagnosis of asthma. Tools such as Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) enquiry, Breath Holding Time (BHT) or Electro-Dermal Screening Test (EDST) may provide useful clinical information, yet their use has not been widely explored or validated. Integrative medicine may be considered to represent a new frontier in medicine where each therapy and diagnostic method is seen to have its own advantages and limitations and where an integration of both diagnostic and therapeutic techniques from conventional and complementary medicine is seen to produce the best results. However, while there is a high community use of complementary therapies for conditions such as asthma, there is also a need to maintain accepted standards of medical and scientific principles and foster high quality research into complementary therapies. Objectives: The current study sought to determine: • If there is a correlation between conventional measures of lung function such as Forced Expiratory Volume in one second (FEV1) and less conventional measures such as airways expired NO level (eNO), electrodermal measures, TCM enquiry and BHT. • If any of the lung function measures are able to distinguish between asthmatic and healthy subjects. • If the use of a rye grass extract is better than placebo in improving requirements for bronchodilator medication, peak flow, forced expiratory volume in one second or quality of life in mild to moderate childhood asthma. Rational for carrying out two separate studies as one study; The author was interested on both the integration of diagnostic techniques as well as the effect of the herbal extract on asthma so it was decided to use the opportunity and put both in one study. Method: A range of conventional and non-conventional measures were conducted in healthy and asthmatic children including demographic details, quality of life data, spirometry measures, airway nitric oxide levels, electro-dermal measures, TCM history enquiries, breath holding time, and skin prick tests. The data were analysed to determine any significant correlations between these measures. A double blind randomized controlled pilot clinical trial was also performed to assess the effect of using rye grass extract in asthmatic children aged 8 to 16 years. Results: There were significant correlations between forced expiratory volume in one second and active quality of life, TCM spleen score and fraction of exhaled nitric oxide measurements. There were also statistically significant differences between asthmatic and healthy subjects in TCM history, breath holding time and exhaled nitric oxide. The use of rye grass extract did not produce any significant improvement over placebo in any of the asthma outcome measures. Conclusions: The use of inexpensive measures such as BHT and TCM enquiry may provide useful clinical information when assessing respiratory conditions such as asthma. However, further research is required in larger populations to confirm their use. The use of the rye grass extract at the dose given in this study did not provide any clinical benefit for the asthmatic children in this study.