Summary of the rule of Zhou Yuhong's prescription for immune thrombocytopenia by data mining

Objective To analyzing and summarize the rule of Zhou Yuhong's herbal prescription for immune thrombocytopenia (ITP). Methods A total of 1 102 prescriptions of Professor Zhou Yuhong for ITP disease in the outpatient department of the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University of Traditional Chinese Medicine between January 2010 and December 2015 were collected; the patients included 46 males and 71 females. On the platform of the software of Chinese Medicine Inheritance System (V2.5), the prescriptions were entered by specialists and checked by two persons to establish the database. The association rule mining (Apriori algorithm), entropy of complex system and other data mining methods were used to count the frequency of the herbs in prescriptions, analyze the association rules between traditional Chinese medicine, and mine core prescription herbs combinations and new prescriptions. Results According to the analysis of the prescriptions, the top five herbs were Agrimonia pilosa, Astragalus membranaceus, Radix rubiae, Poria cocos and Radix lithospermi. The association rule analysis for drugs-selecting revealed that the top five pairs were "Astragalus membranaceus and Agrimonia pilosa", "Radix rubiae and Agrimonia pilosa", "Roasted licorice and Agrimonia pilosa", "Astragalus membranaceus and Radix rubiae", "Poria cocos and Fried malt". The TCM synergy rules showed that the top five pairs of Chinese medicines were "Angelica sinensis and Astragalus membranaceus", "Codonopsis pilosula and Agrimonia pilosa", "Roasted licorice and Agrimonia pilosa", " Atractylodes macrocephala and Agrimonia pilosa", "Semen ziziphi spinosae and Agrimonia pilosa". Relevance analysis of traditional Chinese medicines showed that the top five were "Astragalus membranaceus and Peony bark", "Paeonia lactiflora and Radix lithospermi", "Poria cocos and Buffalo horn", "Cortex Phellodendri and Eclipta", "Paeonia lactiflora and Reed rhizome". Thirty core herbs combinations including 4-5 Chinese medicines were excavated and nine new prescriptions were obtained on this basis. Conclusion Professor Zhou Yu-hong has a rich experience in the treatment of ITP with traditional Chinese medicine. She do well in use of Chinese medicines such as benefiting Qi and nourishing YIN, nourishing Qi and blood, regulating liver and spleen, clearing heat and cooling blood, warmly invigorating spleen and kidney.