Exploring the Same Syndrome Existing in RA and DM through Data Mining

Abstract

It is meaningful to search for the same syndromes existing among different diseases. One important terminology in Chinese medicine is called treating different diseases with the same therapy. In the clinical practice of Chinese medicine, some patients with rheumatoid arthritis and some other patients with diabetes mellitus can be treated with similar therapies. This suggests that there should be something commonly existing in the literature of different diseases unrevealed, i.e., biological networks. It is possible to mine those similar biological networks out. In this paper, we propose an algorithm to retrieve simple and meaningful networks from large data sets of rheumatoid arthritis and diabetes mellitus. We transfer XML type data sets to the structured database of Microsoft® SQL® and visualize them into different graphs by software Cytoscape. The results suggest that Huangqi (Radix Astragali), Guizhi (Ramulus Cinnamomi), Shaoyao (Radix Paeonise Alba), Zhimu (Rhizoma Anemarrhenae), Danggui (Radix Angelicae Sinensis), Chuanxiong (Rhizoma Chuanxiong), Maidong (Tuber Ophiopogonis), Shaoyao (Radix Dioscoreae), and Xuanshen (Radix Scrophulariae) are the commonly used herbal medicines. Huangqi (Radix Astragali) and Danggui (Radix Angelicae Sinensis) are of the core association. Quickening the blood and transforming stasis is the treatment principles for some pattern of rheumatoid arthritis and diabetes mellitus. The network visualized in these figures shows that those pairs of herbs in the two diseases are associated with the central commonly-existing biological networks.