Exploratory Compatibility Regularity of Traditional Chinese Medicine on Osteoarthritis Treatment: A Data Mining and Random Walk-Based Identification

Qiao Zhou; Jian Liu; Ling Xin; Yanyan Fang; Lei Wan; Dan Huang; Jinchen Guo; Jianting Wen; Bing Wang

doi:10.1155/2021/2361512

Exploratory Compatibility Regularity of Traditional Chinese Medicine on Osteoarthritis Treatment: A Data Mining and Random Walk-Based Identification

Evid Based Complement Alternat Med. 2021 Nov 22:2021:2361512. doi: 10.1155/2021/2361512. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Qiao Zhou^{1

2}, Jian Liu^{1

3}, Ling Xin³, Yanyan Fang^{1

3}, Lei Wan^{1

3}, Dan Huang^{1

3}, Jinchen Guo¹, Jianting Wen¹, Bing Wang⁴

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Rheumatism Prevention and Treatment of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Anhui Academy of Chinese Medicine Sciences, Hefei 230031, China.
² Geriatrics Department, The Second Affiliated Hospital, Anhui University of Chinese Medicine, Hefei 230061, China.
³ Department of Rheumatism Immunity, The First Affiliated Hospital, Anhui University of Chinese Medicine, Hefei 230031, China.
⁴ School of Electrical & Informatics Engineering, Anhui University of Technology, Ma'anshan 243002, China.

Abstract

Osteoarthritis (OA) is a degressive and complex disease which is a growing public health problem on a global scale. On basis of an in-house database consisting of clinical records of 13,083 OA patients, the Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) was divided into 4 categories of medicines on the basis of the curative properties of herbs. Due to the lack of depth and internal relationship in the calculation results of TCM compatibility law data mining methods such as statistics and frequency analysis, we use a variety of multidimensional complex network methods that can efficaciously find the compatibility law of TCM, including similarity measure, graphical visualization of network diagram, random walking, and propensity score methods. We summarize common couplet medicines utilized for the treatment of osteoarthritis. The similarity measure method was used to investigate the commonly used drugs for the treatment of osteoarthritis. The method of association rule analysis is used to recognize the compatibility between the components. On basis of the propensity score methods, the evaluation displayed that, compared with single drug, the drug group increased ESR, CRP, C3, C4, IgG, and IgA more efficiently. Concluding, a random walk model was constructed to assess drug efficacy. After applying a random walk model, while revealing the compatibility among different components of TCM, their therapeutic efficacy against OA is analyzed. We obtained four groups of drug combination clusters by similarity measure and 11 pairs of highly connected drugs by association rules, which are cardinal drug combinations in the prescription for the treatment of OA. We also found that different traditional drug pairs were associated with different laboratory indexes, and drug combinations could better optimize laboratory indexes. This study presented that the TCM constituents complement one another. Besides, the therapeutic effects resulting from a variety of combinations of these constituents are quite different.