Basic Treatment Principles for Dysmenorrhea with Chinese Herbal Medicine: An Application of Text Mining

Dysmenorrhea is one of the most common gynecologic complain, especially among young women. It influences daily activities, and lowers life quality. In clinical practice, non-steroidal antiinflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) are used as the firstline treatment for dysmenorrhea. However, longterm use of these medications is associated with side effects. Some Chinese herbal medicines (CHMs) were reported to be effective and safe for dysmenorrhea. However, it is not easy to know well with the treatment principles of dysmenorrhea. This study is aimed to explore the basic treatment principles of dysmenorrhea with text mining technology by mining syndromes and CHMs prescriptions of dysmenorrhea and the connections between them under the framework of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). The text mining results show that blood stasis due to stagnation of qi, blood stasis due to cold, deficiency of qi and blood, stagnation of cold-dampness, stagnation of liver-qi, blood stasis, deficiency of liver and kidney, yin deficiency of kidney, yin deficiency of liver and kidney, and qi stagnation due to cold are the top 10 syndromes in dysmenorrhea. And from these syndromes, we can extract that blood stasis, qi stagnation, cold coagulation, cold-dampness, and deficiency of vital qi are the main pathologic factors of dysmenorrhea, and blood stasis is the most important one among them. Radix Angelicae Sinensis, Rhizoma Corydalis, Radix Paeoniae Alba, Ramulus Cinnamomi, Rhizoma Chuanxiong, Poria, Rhizoma Cyperi, Radix Salviae Miltiorrhizae, Flos Carthami, and Radix Glycyrrhizae are the top 10 CHMs used for dysmenorrhea. And drugs of relieving pain by activating blood flow and dissolving blood stasis such as Radix Angelicae Sinensis, Rhizoma Corydalis and Rhizoma Chuanxiong are most often prescribed. From these results, we can draw a conclusion that relieving pain by activating blood circulation and resolving blood stasis is a basic treatment principle for dysmenorrhea.