Western and Eastern ideas about illness are complementary
New Western insights into illness and health as something that affects the organism as a whole turn out to match non-Western (Chinese) ideas. This is what Prof. Jan van der Greef argues in an article that appeared in December in Nature.
Impetus
Chinese knowledge can sometimes help Western medicine find its way in diagnostics and patient treatment. More research into this topic would give a new impetus to modern medicine, writes Van der Greef. Conversely, Chinese medicine would benefit immensely from the knowledge of Western medicine, in particular relating to acute diseases.
Systems biology
The Western model of medicine was for a long time focused on developing drugs according to the so-called 'target-based' approach. In this model, a drug is developed which focuses on one molecule, and is expected to work for every single patient. Over the last few years, however, it has become increasingly clear that the body is more than the sum of its cells. The individual healing process is complex and the effects of drugs are influenced by all sorts of other factors, including nutrition and mental well-being.
The whole body
The so-called systems biology approach to medical research not only looks at the influence of a drug on a single molecule, but also at its effect on the entire body and the related control processes. In this vision, health is not the absence of disease but the ability of the organism to adapt to physical and emotional disturbances. Systems biology studies this relation to disturbance of the physical equilibrium at molecular level.
Symptoms in context
This holistic idea has for centuries been the foundation of traditional Chinese medicine, which focuses on the entire human being, including his or her personal circumstances. In this approach a diagnosis is formed by talking to the patient and visually examining him or her. This tradition is particularly strong on the relationship between symptoms and control processes.
Biochemical level
Western medicine in turn offers knowledge at the level of the biochemical pathway, and so can enrich and reinforce Chinese medicine. The Chinese form of diagnostics is easier to test scientifically thanks to the new systems approach and the new technologies make it easier to simultaneously investigate many molecular features of an individual patient.
Rheumatism patients
Western and Eastern diagnostic methods and drug development can learn a lot from each other, writes Van der Greef in the article in Nature. He mentions for instance a Dutch study of rheumatism patients, which made use of Chinese knowledge to divide the patients into groups with a cold and a warm pattern. A systems biology study found that there were indeed statistically significant differences in gene expression between the two groups.
Pharmaceutical industry
Van der Greef also points to the possibility for the pharmaceutical industry when developing drugs to make more extensive use of Chinese knowledge of the sub-groups of a given disease, and the way in which plants and herbs can supplement the working of Western drugs.
Conference
Eastern medicine is also gaining attention at European level. A project under the auspices of the Seventh European Framework is studying Chinese medicine using functional genomics. In the context of this project, a conference is planned in April at the Leiden Institute of Biology.
(10 January 2012)
Links
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‘All systems go’, artikel prof.dr. Jan van der Greef in Nature
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Congress of EU project on Good Practice in Traditional Chinese Medicine Research in the Post-genomic Era (15-18 April 2012)
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