The hepatotoxicity of some Chinese herbs has been a cause for concern in recent years. However, some herbs, such as rhubarb, have been documented as having both therapeutic and toxic effects on the liver, leading to the complex problem of distinguishing the benefits from the risks of using this herb. To comparatively analyze the dose-response relationship between rhubarb and hepatic health, we administrated total rhubarb extract(RE) to normal and carbon tetrachloride(CCl4)-treated rats for 12 weeks at 4 dosage levels(2.00, 5.40, 14.69 and 40.00 g·kg−1, measured as the quantity of crude material), followed by biochemical and histopathological tests of the rats' livers. A composite pattern was extracted by factor analysis, using all the biochemical indices as variables, into a visual representation of two mathematically obtained factors, which could be interpreted as the fibrosis factor and the cellular injury factor, according to the values of the variable loadings. The curative effect of administering the two lowest dosages of RE to CCl4-treated rats was mainly expressed as a decrease in the extent of cellular injury. The hepatoprotective mechanism of RE might be related to its antioxidant effect, the antagonism of the free radical damage to hepatocytes caused by CCl4. By contrast, the RE-induced liver damage was mainly expressed as a significant increase in the amount of fibrosis in both normal rats at all dosage levels and CCl4-treated rats at the two highest dosage levels. Therefore, the hepatotoxic potential of RE could be attributable to the liver cell fibrosis induced by high doses of the herb. This study illustrates the bidirectional potential of rhubarb and demonstrates the feasibility of using factor analysis to study the dose-response relationships between herbal medicines and hepatotoxicity or the healing effects of these herbs by extracting the underlying interrelationships among a number of functional bio-indices in a holistic manner.

This study analyzes single factors that affect the prognosis of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and establishes a prognosis model by multivariate analysis. We retrospectively analyzed the clinical features of SARS in 165 clinically confirmed severe cases. Both age and existence of other diseases before SARS were significantly correlated with prognosis (r=0.506 and r=0.457, respectively; P<.001). During the acute phase of SARS, lactate dehydrogenase level, degree of hypoxemia, respiratory rate, alpha -hydroxybutyric dehydrogenase level, creatine kinase isoenzyme-MB, platelet count, and number of involved lobes noted on chest radiographs, and so on, correlated markedly with the prognosis (r=0.257-0.788; P<.05). The multivariate prognosis regression model was associated with degree of hypoxemia and platelet count. The model was defined by the formula Py=1=es/(1+es), where S is [2.490 x degree of hypoxemia]-[0.050 x number of platelets], and it had a high sensitivity (91.67%), specificity (98.33%), and accuracy (96.42%). The model could be used to effectively judge the state of illness and the prognosis.

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