Primary liver cancer (PLC) is one of the most common malignant tumors because of its high incidence and high mortality. Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) plays an active role in the treatment of PLC. As the most important part in the TCM system, syndrome differentiation based on the clinical manifestations from traditional four diagnostic methods has met great challenges and questions with the lack of statistical validation support. In this study, we provided evidences for TCM syndrome differentiation of PLC using the method of analysis of latent structural model from clinic data, thus providing basis for establishing TCM syndrome criteria. And also we obtain the common syndromes of PLC as well as their typical clinical manifestations, respectively.

The early diagnosis and severity grading for acute pancreatitis (AP) are difficult to determine because of the complexity and differences in disease process. To date, few studies have investigated the role of lymphocyte ratio (LR) in AP. Therefore, the objective of the present study was to investigate the prognostic value of LR as an indicator in AP, as well as determine an optimal cut-off value for the severity prediction. There were two hundred four patients involved in this study, ninety-two of whom had severe acute pancreatitis (SAP). The LR was analyzed on admission and correlated with severity, which was determined using the Atlanta classification. The optimal cut-off value for LR was generated using receiving operator characteristic (ROC) curves. The results showed that the LR in the SAP group decreased significantly compared to the mild acute pancreatitis (MAP) group (8.82 vs. 13.43). The optimal cut-off value obtained from ROC curves was 0.081, with a sensitivity of 80.4%, a specificity of 53.3%, a positive likelihood ratio of 1.722, and a negative likelihood ratio of 0.368. In conclusion, the LR is obviously related to the condition of AP patients and is valuable for the differential diagnosis of SAP in early stages of AP.

The red peony root derived from Paeonia lactiflora has been applied to treat human inflammatory diseases. To investigate its therapeutic potential in treating moderately severe acute pancreatitis (MSAP), which has been rarely studied, this study was designed as a double-blinded, placebo-controlled, randomized clinical trial. A total of 60 MSAP patients were enrolled and randomly divided into an experimental (n = 30) group and a control group (n = 30), who received a coloclyster of 15 g of red peony root or placebo granules dissolved in 150 mL of water, respectively. The patients’ demographic and clinical characteristics were recorded. The results showed that the experimental group had a shorter remission time of fever (p<0.05) and abdominal pain (p<0.01) and faster resumption of self-defecation (p<0.01) than did the control group. In addition, the coloclyster of red peony root decreased the modified Balthazar CT score as well as the serum interleukin-6 and tumor necrosis factor-alpha levels to a greater extent than did the placebo coloclyster (p<0.05). The remission times for the normalization of white blood cells and percentage of neutrophils and lymphocytes in the experimental group were also significantly shorter than those in the control group (p<0.05). In conclusion, a coloclyster of red peony root could help alleviate the clinical symptoms and shorten the course of MSAP by possibly attenuating systematic inflammation. This trial is registered with 14004664.