Study of the regularities in the treatment of psoriasis vulgaris by TCM: Applying association rule mining to TCM literature

The purpose of this study was to find out the association among herbs in specific prescriptions for psoriasis vulgaris and to evaluate the application of Association Rule Mining(ARM) in this field. Datas including herbs, prescriptions, and syndromes were extracted from 3,136 Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) publications. An improved A priori algorithm of the association rule mining (ARM) method using WEKA 3.6.6 software was performed to mine herb pairs and groups, and rules that emerged between syndromes and herb pairs. Results revealed common herbal treatments and herb associations for psoriasis vulgaris in TCM Single herbs as well as herb combinations identified in the study should be considered when tailoring prescriptions for psoriasis based on symptom differentiation. Our work also demonstrated the practicality of improved AR in studies using a large TCM literature database.