Medicine in motion: Opportunities, challenges and data analytics-based solutions for traditional medicine integration into western medical practice

Abstract

Ethnopharmacological Relevance Traditional pharmacopeias have been developed by multiple cultures and evaluated for efficacy and safety through both historical/empirical iteration and more recently through controlled studies using Western scientific paradigms and an increasing emphasis on data science methodologies for network pharmacology. Traditional medicines represent likely sources of relatively inexpensive drugs for symptomatic management as well as potential libraries of new therapeutic approaches. Leveraging this potential requires hard evidence for efficacy that separates science from pseudoscience. Materials and Methods We performed a review of non-Western medical systems and developed case studies that illustrate the epistemological and practical translative barriers that hamper their transition to integration with Western approaches. We developed a new data analytics approach, in silico convergence analysis, to deconvolve modes of action, and potentially predict desirable components of TM-derived formulations based on computational consensus analysis across cultures and medical systems. Results Abstraction, simplification and altered dose and delivery modalities were identified as factors that influence actual and perceived efficacy once a medicine is moved from a non-Western to Western setting. Case studies on these factors highlighted issues with translation between non-Western and Western epistemologies, including those where epistemological and medicinal systems drive markets that can be epicenters for zoonoses such as the novel Coronavirus. The proposed novel data science approach demonstrated the ability to identify and predict desirable medicinal components for a test indication, pain. Conclusions Relegation of traditional therapies to the relatively unregulated nutraceutical industry may lead healthcare providers and patients to underestimate the therapeutic potential of these medicines. We suggest three areas of emphasis for this field: First, vertical integration and embedding of traditional medicines into healthcare systems would subject them to appropriate regulation and evidence-based practice, as viable integrative implementation mode. Second, we offer a new Bradford-Hill-like framework for setting research priorities and evaluating efficacy, with the goal of rescuing potentially valuable therapies from the nutraceutical market and discrediting those that are pseudoscience. Third, data analytics pipelines offer new capacity to generate new types of TMS-inspired medicines that are rationally-designed based on integrated knowledge across cultures, and also provide an evaluative framework against which to test claims of fidelity and efficacy to TMS made for nutraceuticals.

Electroacupuncture Treats Myocardial Infarction by Influencing the Regulation of Substance P in the Neurovascular to Modulate PGI2/TXA2 Metabolic Homeostasis via PI3K/AKT Pathway: A Bioinformatics-Based Multiomics and Experimental Study

“…The integration of computational techniques into traditional medicine is necessary for the integration of systems biology into traditional medicine based on a holistic approach [26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36]. In order to analyze the targets and key pathways associated with AMI treated with EA in rat models, data from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database were retrieved in this study.…”

A socio-ecological critique on India’s local health traditions amidst rising incidence of global pandemics

“…However, to realize these benefits, the country has to work strongly in many grey areas. There is a need for vertical integration of these systems from across the cultures into modern healthcare systems, the designing of a framework for setting research priorities (to avoid being discredited as pseudoscience) and evaluating fidelity and efficacy of potentially valuable therapies and drugs, using data analytic based solutions, to generate new types of traditional medicinal system-inspired medicines ( Jansen et al 2021 ).…”

“…In a recent synthesis, Jansen et al (2021) argued that demonizing traditional medicinal systems as pseudoscience can have negative and dangerous consequences. They evaluated various challenges confronting traditional medicinal systems, particularly those involving the use of plant-derived medicines, suggesting also certain measures to overcome them, such as de-grouping plant derived medicinal mixtures as an outgroup in complementary and alternative medicines (CAM), by using Bradford-Hill and other alike criteria (e.g.…”

“…They evaluated various challenges confronting traditional medicinal systems, particularly those involving the use of plant-derived medicines, suggesting also certain measures to overcome them, such as de-grouping plant derived medicinal mixtures as an outgroup in complementary and alternative medicines (CAM), by using Bradford-Hill and other alike criteria (e.g. Koch’s postulates and statistical evidence from pre-clinical and clinical experiments), overcoming the transformation/abstraction of TM taking place between cultures and from a traditional framework to the Western market, attention to the epistemological contrasts between TM and western scientific medicine and use of viable implementation models and research imperatives to integrate these therapeutic approaches into modern health systems ( Jansen et al 2021 ).…”

Impact of herbal supplements nowadays: an overview

“…With hopes of preventing chronic diseases, particularly those related to lifestyle, the use of herbal products is, nowadays, globally widespread but recognized in varying degrees in different countries. In Asia and Africa, for instance, traditional medicine, particularly herbal medicine, generally coexists with modern medicine in the healthcare sector as a complementary or alternative therapy; however, there is tension and collision between these two in Europe and particularly the US [2,14]. All the same, complementary/alternative therapies are progressively being integrated into the healthcare system of the West, as the number of patients demanding herbal therapy keeps growing [15].…”