To discover the Traditional Chinese Medicine techniques applied in Diabetes mellitus through data mining

Abstract

The morbidity of Diabetes mellitus (DM) is increasing at a speed of 3.2% per year globally, and involving people of all ages, especially the ones who are more than fifties. Most of the patients suffer from the Non-insulin-dependent type which is also called type 2 diabetes mellitus. Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) has accumulated rich experience in curing DM which is considered as “Xiaoke” in TCM theory. Both food therapy and TCM appropriate techniques such as acupuncture and Tuina can work well in symptom improvement and blood sugar control. Data mining is a novel technology; it can not only collect as many relative literatures as possible but filter and refine the information so as to obtain valuable findings for clinical physicians. The results of data mining include two parts. Part I are the lists of most frequently used food and herbs, part II are the networks of diet therapy, treatment principle and acupoints. The conclusion is data mining should be thought as a useful technology which can be applied in TCM research to explore the treatment rules, furthermore, the relevance among treatment principle, herbs and TCM appropriate techniques could be detected through network establishment.