Effective core formulae for lung cancer based on complex network and survival analysis / 中国中药杂志

The study on the effective core formulae (CEF) not only summarized traditional chinese medicine (TCM) treatment experience, but also helped reveal the underlying knowledge in the formulation of TCM prescriptions. The aim of the present paper was to investigate the method of data mining for the discovery of core effective formulae for lung cancer. In the present study, a prescription fingerprint approach was used to characterize the staged prescription information of patients. The D index was used to screen potential beneficial herbs. Then, based on a herbal compatibility network, the maximal clique searching algorithm (BK algorithm) and survival analysis were applied to discover CEF for lung cancer, and a mining analysis was made for the 322 cases from Longhua hospital. The correlation between prescriptions and survival time was analyzed by prescription fingerprints. Forty-three potentially beneficial herbs were obtained, and two CEFs were significant for the survival time by a parametric survival model based on lognormal distribution, the results were verified by a multivariate survival model. The rules of combination of the two CEFs basically conform to TCM onco-therapeutic theory of strengthening the body resistance and the actual conditions in clinic. All results showed that the established approach was feasible for discovering the core effective formulae for lung cancer and mining survival data for complex TCM onco-therapy.

Chemotherapy in conjunction with traditional Chinese medicine for survival of elderly patients with advanced non-small-cell lung cancer: protocol for a randomized double-blind controlled trial / 中西医结合学报

<p><b>BACKGROUND</b>Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is considered an important complementary therapy with beneficial effects for cancer patients. Elderly patients with non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) are a complex patient group with increasing co-morbidity and shrinking physiological reserve, and may derive substantial benefit from the supportive aspects of TCM. Researchers from Shanghai Longhua Hospital found that qi and yin deficiency is a common syndrome in patients with stage III or IV lung cancer. This project was designed to study the combination of single-agent chemotherapy with TCM methods of benefiting qi and yin in elderly patients with advanced NSCLC.</p><p><b>METHODS AND DESIGN</b>This is a double-blind controlled, multi-center, and prospective study with randomly selected participants from elderly NSCLC patients in China. Seventy-six patients who meet the inclusion criteria will be allocated into two groups, which will receive treatments of 3-week single-agent chemotherapy with TCM or placebo for four cycles. Progression-free survival (PFS) is the primary end point, and the secondary end points are overall survival, objective response rate, time-to-progression, and quality of life (EORTC QLQ-LC43, and TCM syndrome score). Meanwhile, other end points such as toxicity, side effects and safety of the treatments will be assessed.</p><p><b>DISCUSSION</b>Results from this study may provide evidence on the effectiveness, and parameters for the usage of single-agent chemotherapy combined with or without TCM on PFS of elderly patients with NSCLC.</p><p><b>TRIAL REGISTRATION</b>ClinicalTrials.gov. (Identifier: NCT01780181).</p>