Biological Differentiation of Dampness‐Heat Syndromes in Chronic Hepatitis B: From Comparative MicroRNA Microarray Profiling to Biomarker Identification

Abstract

Increasing interest is aroused by traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) treatment of chronic hepatitis B (CHB) based on specific TCM syndrome. As the most common CHB syndromes, spleen-stomach dampness-heat (SSDH) syndrome and liver-gallbladder dampness-heat (LGDH) syndrome are still apt to be confused in TCM diagnosis, greatly hindering the stable exertion of TCM effectiveness. It is urgently needed to provide objective and biological evidences for differentiation and identification of the two significant syndromes. In this study, microRNA (miRNA) microarray analyses coupled with bioinformatics were employed for comparative miRNA profiling of SSDH and LGDH patients. It was found that the two syndromes had both the same and different significantly differentially expressed miRNAs (SDE-miRNAs). Commonness and specificity were also both found between their SDE-miRNA-based bioinformatics analyses, including Hierarchical Clustering, Gene Ontology (GO), Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathways, and miRNA-GO/pathway networks. Furthermore, syndrome-specific SDE-miRNAs were identified as the potential biomarkers, including hsa-miR-1273g-3p and hsa-miR-4419b for SSDH as well as hsa-miR-129-1-3p and hsa-miR-129-2-3p for LGDH. All these laid biological and clinical bases for classification and diagnosis of the two significant CHB dampness-heat syndromes including SSDH and LGDH, providing more opportunities for better application of TCM efficacy and superiority in CHB treatment.

The Challenges of Ethical Review in Clinical Research of Traditional Chinese Medicine

“…erefore, the performance and treatment protocols in various stages of the same disease are different. However, the diagnosis of "syndrome" is usually subjective, ambiguous, and unrepeatable, and it is difficult to find quantitative indicators even if part of the scientific basis of "syndrome" in TCM has been revealed by related studies with the development and application of genomics and metabonomics in recent years [5][6][7][8]. Meanwhile, it is challenging to format an acknowledged and standard model in syndrome differentiation, and the current methods for diagnosis are not perfect either.…”