Traditional & Alternative Medicine

Traditional Uighur medicine shares an origin with Greco-Arab medicine. It describes a disease in terms of Abnormal Hilits (syndromes) that are caused by imbalance of the dynamic homeostasis of four normal Hilits (humors), consisting of Kan, Phlegm, Safra and Savda, which correspond to Blood, Phlegm, Yellow Bile, and Black Bile in Greco-Arab medicine. In the clinical practice, the Abnormal Savda (syndrome), which refers to the change in Black Bile, is the major pathological condition of diseases and can be treated with its unique prescription, composed of Abnormal Savda Munziq and Abnormal Savda Mushil, known as Abnormal Savda therapy. In this study, 29 cancer patients diagnosed with Abnormal Savda underwent Abnormal Savda therapy. According to the criteria in Uighur medicine, the syndrome scores for Abnormal Savda signifi cantly declined aft er treatment. Subsequent proteomic

analysis identifi ed 27 proteins diff erentially expressed in the plasma of patients from baseline to aft er treatment. Bio-informatic analysis indicated that most of these proteins are potential tumor biomarkers. Among the seven proteins detected by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, the expression of vWF, APOC4, and THBS1 was signifi cantly upregulated, while ADIPOQ and ITIH3 were downregulated aft er to treatment. We previously reported the down-regulation of vWF and THBS1 and upregulation of ITIH3 in cancer patients diagnosed with Abnormal Savda compared with those with other syndromes and healthy controls. Th erefore, the inverse regulation of protein expression in response to treatment provides evidence for the use of Abnormal Savda therapy as an alternative or auxiliary method to the clinical treatment of cancer patients by Western medicine.