Identifying the Chinese Herbal Medicine Network and Core Formula for Allergic Rhinitis on a Real-World Database

Yen-Chu Lu; Ching-Wei Yang; Yi-Hsuan Lin; Ju-Yu Hsueh; Jiun-Liang Chen; Sien-Hung Yang; Yu-Chun Chen; Hsing-Yu Chen

doi:10.1155/2020/5979708

Identifying the Chinese Herbal Medicine Network and Core Formula for Allergic Rhinitis on a Real-World Database

Evid Based Complement Alternat Med. 2020 Nov 5:2020:5979708. doi: 10.1155/2020/5979708. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Yen-Chu Lu¹, Ching-Wei Yang¹, Yi-Hsuan Lin^{1

2

3}, Ju-Yu Hsueh⁴, Jiun-Liang Chen^{1

2}, Sien-Hung Yang^{1

2}, Yu-Chun Chen⁵, Hsing-Yu Chen^{1

2

3}

Affiliations

¹ Division of Chinese Internal Medicine, Center for Traditional Chinese Medicine, Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Taoyuan, Taiwan.
² School of Traditional Chinese Medicine, College of Medicine, Chang Gung University, Taoyuan, Taiwan.
³ Graduate Institute of Clinical Medical Sciences, College of Medicine, Chang Gung University, Taoyuan, Taiwan.
⁴ Department of Public Health, China Medical University, Taichung, Taiwan.
⁵ School of Medicine, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan.

Abstract

Materials and methods: Patients with a primary diagnosis of AR (ICD-9-CM code: 477.9) in 2010 were included, and the National Health Insurance Research Database in Taiwan was used as the data source. Association rule mining and social network analysis were used to establish and explore the CHM network. Possible molecular pathways of the CHM network were summarized and compared with commonly used western medicine (WM) by conducting overrepresentation analysis in the Reactome pathway database. The potential proteins acted by CHMs were obtained from the CHM ingredient-protein databases, including STITCH, TCMSP, TCMID, and TCM@Taiwan.

Results: There were 89,148 AR subjects found in 2010, and a total of 33,507 patients ever used CHM. On an average, 5.6 types of CHMs were utilized per prescription. Xin-Yi-Qing-Fei-Tang was used most frequently (25.5% of 222,279 prescriptions), while Xiao-Qing-Long-Tang with Xin-Yi-San was the most commonly prescribed CHM-CHM combination. Up to six distinctive clusters could be found among the CHM network, and core CHMs could be found for AR, such as Xiao-Qing-Long-Tang and Xin-Yi-Qing-Fei-Tang. A total of 140 molecular pathways were covered by the CHM network (2,432 ingredients from 31 kinds of CHMs), while 39 WMs covered 55 pathways. Among pathways responding to the immune system, WM mainly acted on cytokine signaling-related pathways, while CHM mostly acted on neutrophil/macrophage-related innate pathways and dendritic cell-related adaptive immunity pathways.

Conclusion: Our study demonstrated and analyzed the CHM network for AR. Core CHM for AR and possible molecular pathways were presented as well, and this information is crucial for researchers to select candidates for CHM-related studies.