Automatic tongue image segmentation and tongue classification are two crucial tongue characterization tasks in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). Due to the complexity of automatic tongue segmentation and the fine-grained traits of tongue classification, both tasks are challenging. However, as discussed in the introduction section, these two tasks are interrelated, making them highly compatible with the idea of multitask joint learning (MTL). By sharing the underlying parameters and adding two different task objective functions, a MTL method for segmenting and classifying tongue images is proposed in this paper. Moreover, two state-of-the-art deep neural network variants (UNET and discriminative filter bank (DFL)) are fused into the MTL to perform the tongue segmentation and tongue classification tasks, respectively. To the best of our knowledge, our method is the first attempt to manage both tasks simultaneously with MTL. We conducted extensive experiments on reliable and quality assured datasets. The experimental results show that our joint method outperforms both the existing tongue segmentation methods and the existing tongue classification methods. Visualizations and ablation studies are provided to aid in understanding our approach, which suggest that our method is highly consistent with human perception

Blood-brain barrier disruption plays an important role in central nervous system diseases. This review provides information on the role of mitochondrial oxidative stress in brain microvascular endothelial cells in cellular dysfunction, the disruption of intercellular junctions, transporter dysfunction, abnormal angiogenesis, neurovascular decoupling, and the involvement and aggravation of vascular inflammation and illustrates related molecular mechanisms. In addition, recent drug and nondrug therapies targeting cerebral vascular endothelial cell mitochondria to repair the blood-brain barrier are discussed. This review shows that mitochondrial oxidative stress disorder in brain microvascular endothelial cells plays a key role in the occurrence and development of blood-brain barrier damage and may be critical in various pathological mechanisms of blood-brain barrier damage. These new findings suggest a potential new strategy for the treatment of central nervous system diseases through mitochondrial modulation of cerebral vascular endothelial cells.

Resembling the role of disease diagnosis in Western medicine, pathogenesis (also called Bing Ji) diagnosis is one of the utmost important tasks in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). In TCM theory, pathogenesis is a complex system composed of a group of interrelated factors, which is highly consistent with the character of systems science (SS). In this paper, we introduce a heuristic definition called pathogenesis network (PN) to represent pathogenesis in the form of the directed graph. Accordingly, a computational method of pathogenesis diagnosis, called network differentiation (ND), is proposed by integrating the holism principle in SS. ND consists of three stages. The first stage is to generate all possible diagnoses by Cartesian Product operated on specified prior knowledge corresponding to the input symptoms. The second stage is to screen the validated diagnoses by holism principle. The third stage is to pick out the clinical diagnosis by physician-computer interaction. Some theorems are stated and proved for the further optimization of ND in this paper. We conducted simulation experiments on 100 clinical cases. The experimental results show that our proposed method has an excellent capability to fit the holistic thinking in the process of physician inference.

Icariin has a variety of biological activities, such as lipid-lowering effects, and has attracted widespread attention in recent years. However, it is not clear whether lipid-lowering effect is that multiple metabolites or a particular component plays a major role. It is known that icariin has a variety of metabolites in the body, including icariside I, icariside II, icaritin, desmethylicaritin, and other metabolites. Many of these studies have shown that the metabolites of icariin have a lipid-lowering effect. This paper focuses on the lipid-regulating effects of icariin and its metabolites in vitro and in vivo, and highlights the mechanisms involved. Icariin may have potential in the development of therapeutic strategies to regulate lipid metabolism.

Objective. The efficacy of auricular acupressure in patients with hypertension and insomnia is controversial. This systematic review aims to explore the effectiveness of auricular acupressure in reducing blood pressure and improving sleep in this population. Methods. We conducted an extensive database search in Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, PubMed, Ovid LWW, Web of Science, Chinese Biomedical Literature Database, China Knowledge Resource Integrated Database, Wanfang Data, and China Science and Technology Journal Database on randomized controlled trials published from inception to November 2019 that compared auricular acupressure with a control or comparison group on blood pressure control and sleep improvement. Two reviewers independently conducted data screening and extraction. Study quality was evaluated using the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions. Meta‐analyses were performed on blood pressure, Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), the efficacy rate of diagnostic and therapeutic criteria for traditional Chinese medicine syndromes (DTCTCMS), and the efficacy rate of guidelines for traditional Chinese medicine (new drug) clinical research (GTCMCR) by Revman 5.3.0. Results. A total of 18 randomized controlled trials with 1685 patients were identified. Compared with a control or comparison group, pooled meta‐analyses showed that auricular acupressure significantly improved systolic blood pressure (MD = −15.05, 95% CI (−18.49, −11.61), P < 0.00001), diastolic blood pressure (MD = −8.41, 95% CI (−11.33, −5.48), P < 0.00001), PSQI (MD = −2.37, 95% CI (−4.64, −0.10), P = 0.04), the efficacy rate of DTCTCMS (RR = 1.63, 95% CI (1.16, 2.28), P = 0.004), and the efficacy rate of GTCMCR (RR = 1.25, 95% CI (1.12, 1.38)). Conclusions. The results demonstrated a favorable effect of auricular acupressure to reduce blood pressure and improve sleep in patients with hypertension and insomnia. Further studies to better understand the acupoints and intervention times of auricular acupressure are warranted.

Maslinic acid (MA) is a pentacyclic triterpene acid, which exists in many plants, including olive, and is highly safe for human beings. In recent years, it has been reported that MA has anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, anti-tumor, hypoglycemic, neuroprotective and other biological activities. More and more experimental data has shown that MA has a good therapeutic effect on multiple organ diseases, indicating that it has great clinical application potential. In this paper, the extraction, purification, identification and analysis, biological activity, pharmacokinetics in vivo and molecular mechanism of MA in treating various organ diseases are reviewed. It is hoped to provide a new idea for MA to treat various organ diseases.