Measure of the Associations of Accupoints and Pathologies Documented in the Classical Acupuncture Literature

Objectives : This study aims to analyze the co-occurrence of pathological symptoms and corresponding acupoints as documented by the comprehensive acupuncture and moxibustion records in the classical texts of Far East traditional medicine as an aid to a more efficient understanding of the tacit treatment principles of ancient physicians. Methods : The Classic of Nourishing Life with Acupuncture and Moxibustion(Zhenjiu Zisheng Jing; hereinafter ZZJ) was selected as the primary reference book for the analysis. The pathology-acupoint co-occurrence analysis was performed by applying 4 values of vector space measures(weighted Euclidean distance, Euclidean distance, V and Canberra distance), which measure the distance between the observed and expected co-occurrence counts, and 3 values of probabilistic measures(association strength, Fisher's exact test and Jaccard similarity), which measure the probability of observed co-occurrences. Results : The treatment records contained in ZZJ were preprocessed, which yielded 4162 pathology-acupoint sets. Co-occurrence was performed applying 7 different analysis variables, followed by a prediction simulation. The prediction simulation results revealed the Weighted Euclidean distance had the highest prediction rate with 24.32%, followed by Canberra distance(23.14%) and association strength(21.29%). Conclusions : The weighted Euclidean distance among the vector space measures and the association strength among the probabilistic measures were verified to be the most efficient analysis methods in analyzing the correlation between acupoints and pathologies found in the classical medical texts.