Information integration research on cumulative effect of 'Siqi, Wuwei, and Guijing' in Traditional Chinese Medicine.

OBJECTIVE: To study the morphological basis of the role of Siqi (cold as winter, cool as autumn, warm as spring, hot as summer), Wuwei (five flavors: sweet, pungent, salty, sour, and bitter), and Guijing (meridian tropism) through the use of information integration.

METHODS: A 14C-2-deoxy-glucose autoradiography method was adopted to determine the overall impact of treatment with 39 herbs on functions of various tissues and organs. Data was measured at 4 hs after a single dose and following the last treatment of repeated doses for a week. Least-squares estimation was used and fitted for each herb regression effect of organs and tissues after single and repeated treatment. The slope of the regression line represented the cumulative trend of the effect of the herbs (β), and the standard deviation of the slope (Sβ) was compared with those of the untreated animals (t 'test). All significantly cumulative effect trends were applied with an artificial neural network, which integrated the relationship among Siqi, Wuwei, and Guijing with tissues and organs.

RESULTS: There is a certain relationship among the Siqi, Wuwei, Guijing and the anatomy of organs and tissues, but the different scores indicate that influence of Siqi, Wuwei, Guijing to anatomy of organs and tissues was a nonlinear state.

CONCLUSION: Results demonstrated that the effects of Siqi, Wuwei, and Guijing have a morphological basis, and each concept was associated with multiple anatomical structures.