Network medicine framework reveals generic herb-symptom effectiveness of traditional Chinese medicine.

ABSTRACT: Understanding natural and traditional medicine can lead to world-changing drug discoveries. Despite the therapeutic effectiveness of individual herbs, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) lacks a scientific foundation and is often considered a myth. In this study, we establish a network medicine framework and reveal the general TCM treatment principle as the topological relationship between disease symptoms and TCM herb targets on the human protein interactome. We find that proteins associated with a symptom form a network module, and the network proximity of an herb's targets to a symptom module is predictive of the herb's effectiveness in treating the symptom. These findings are validated using patient data from a hospital. We highlight the translational value of our framework by predictin

SUBMITTER: Gan X 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10610911 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature