Exploring the biological basis of deficiency pattern in rheumatoid arthritis through text mining

Abstract

In the theory of traditional Chinese medicine, deficiency pattern is a distinguished one among patterns in rheumatoid arthritis. As for the explanation of deficiency pattern in rheumatoid arthritis, traditional Chinese medicine explains the deficiency in organs of both liver and kidney. As for the modern medicine, no specific factor available to explain it. In this paper, we propose an approach through data mining to explore the biological basis of deficiency pattern in rheumatoid arthritis. In this approach, the first step is to find the formula in traditional Chinese medicine in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. Then, list out the top three diseases which can be regulated by this formula. After that, we can find the networks of biological basis existing among all these three diseases by data mining. By analyzing these networks, directly or not, the deficiency pattern in rheumatoid arthritis might be caused by the chronic inflammation.