title: A network-based systematic study for the mechanism of the treatment of zhengs related to cough variant asthma.
abstract: Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has shown significant efficacy in the treatment of cough variant asthma (CVA), a special type of asthma. However, there is shortage of explanations for relevant mechanism of treatment. As Zhengs differentiation is a critical concept in TCM, it is necessary to explain the mechanism of treatment of Zhengs. Based on TCM clinical cases, this study illustrated the mechanism of the treatment of three remarkably relevant Zhengs for CVA: "FengXieFanFei," "FeiQiShiXuan", and "QiDaoLuanJi." To achieve this goal, five steps were carried out: (1) determining feature Zhengs and corresponding key herbs of CVA by analyses of clinical cases; (2) finding out potential targets of the key herbs and clustering them based on their functional annotations; (3) constructing an ingredient-herb network and an ingredient network; (4) identifying modules of the ingredient network; (5) illustrating the mechanism of the treatment by further mining the latent biological implications within each module. The systematic study reveals that the treatment of "FengXieFanFei," "FeiQiShiXuan," and "QiDaoLuanJi" has effects on the regulation of multiple bioprocesses by herbs containing different ingredients with functions of steroid metabolism regulation, airway inflammation, and ion conduction and transportation. This network-based systematic study will be a good way to boost the scientific understanding of mechanism of the treatment of Zhengs.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China.
authors.forename: Di
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Institute of Chinese Materia Medica, China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, Beijing 100700, China.
authors.forename: Fangbo
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Institute of Chinese Materia Medica, China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, Beijing 100700, China.
authors.forename: Shihuan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Tang
authors.affiliation: China-Japan Friendship Hospital, Beijing 100029, China.
authors.forename: Yan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China ; Institute of Chinese Materia Medica, China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, Beijing 100700, China.
authors.forename: Peng
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Lu
authors.affiliation: Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China.
authors.forename: Shaoxin
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Wen
authors.affiliation: China-Japan Friendship Hospital, Beijing 100029, China.
authors.forename: Hongchun
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China.
authors.forename: Xi
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: China-Japan Friendship Hospital, Beijing 100029, China.
authors.forename: Enxiang
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Chao
authors.affiliation: Institute of Chinese Materia Medica, China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, Beijing 100700, China.
authors.forename: Hongjun
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Yang