Dose Correlation of Danggui and Chuanxiong Drug Pairs in the Chinese Medicine Prescription Based on the Copula Function

Abstract

Dosage is essential for studying the compatibility and effectiveness of traditional Chinese medicine. Danggui and Chuanxiong are widely used in traditional Chinese medicine for ailments and treatment of various disorders. 628 traditional Chinese medicine prescriptions containing Danggui and Chuanxiong were extracted from the self-built prescription database and screened for the three groups of prescriptions, i.e., irregular menstruation, sores, and stroke. We processed and tested the dosage of Danggui and Chuanxiong and selected the optimal copula function, Gumbel copula function, from the Archimedes function family and elliptical copula function family to establish the data model. To establish the presence of a correlation between the dose of Danggui and Chuanxiong, a graph of the joint distribution function of rank correlation coefficients, Kendall’s rank correlation coefficient and Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient, was used. Our results suggest that the model using the Gumbel copula function better reflects the correlation between the dose of Danggui and Chuanxiong. For irregular menstruation, sores, and strokes, Kendall’s rank correlation coefficients were 0.6724, 0.5930, and 0.7757, respectively, and Spearman’s correlation coefficients were 0.8536, 0.7812, and 0.9285, respectively. In all three prescription groups, the dose of Danggui and Chuanxiong was positively correlated, implying that, as the dosage of one drug increases, the dosage of the other increases as well. From the perspective of data mining and mathematical statistics, the use of the copula function model to evaluate the correlation between the prescribed dosage of the two drugs was innovative and provided a new model for the scientific interpretation of the compatibility of traditional drugs. This might also serve to guide the clinical use of traditional Chinese medicine.

Dose Correlation of Panax ginseng and Atractylodes macrocephala Koidz. Drug Pairs in the Chinese Medicine Prescription Based on the Copula Function

“…The copula function model analysis results showed that, in the three groups of prescriptions for treating irregular menstruation, sores, and stroke, the doses of Chuanxiong and Danggui were all positively correlated. These results also indicate that the copula function model was suitable for analyzing the dose correlation in TCM [ 26 ].…”

“…Some prescriptions were also selected from 414 famous doctors in modern times, including some hospitals and pharmaceutical factories. Finally, 51083 prescriptions (the entire database) were included in our prescription database [ 26 ]. Figure 1 shows the study process.…”

“…Thus, when measuring the copula function, Kendall and Spearman rank correlation coefficients are often adopted. The calculation and analysis formula used to calculate the correlation coefficient using the copula function can be found in the published literature [ 26 ].…”

“…However, the lack of research on the compatibility of drug pairs with dose makes it difficult to show a correlation between drug pairs in metering applications. In a previous study, we innovatively used the copula function to study the correlation between Danggui ( Angelica sinensis ) and Chuanxiong ( Ligusticum ) to find a positive correlation between these two drugs [ 26 ]. The new method proved to be one of the best choices for exploring the quantitative relationship between the two drugs on the basis of different indications.…”

Time Evolution of the Stroke Symptom-Herb Networks Based on TCM Prescriptions

“…As we can see in Figure 11A, their MSD curves are very similar. The results of 45 prescriptions containing Chuanxiong and Danggui analyzed by Gumbel copula function model showing that the Chuanxiong and Danggui have a strong nonlinear correlation in stroke, and the correlation is positive [18]. Studies have shown that their extracts exert neuronal protective effects by promoting endogenous proliferation of neuroblastoma cells and production of neural differentiation factors after ischemic injury from stroke in rats [19]- [20].…”