Integrating next-generation sequencing and traditional tongue diagnosis to determine tongue coating microbiome
Bai Jiang, Xujun Liang, Yang Chen, Tao Ma, Liyang Liu, Junfeng Li, Rui Jiang, Ting Chen, Xuegong Zhang & Shao Li · Scientific Reports · 2012 December
DOI 10.1038/srep00936
Objective
This is the first investigation on the association between traditional tongue diagnosis and the tongue coating microbiome using next-generation sequencing.
Conclusions
The results reveal an important connection between the tongue-coating microbiome and traditional tongue diagnosis and illustrate the potential of the tongue-coating microbiome as a novel holistic biomarker for characterizing patient subtypes.
Critical Appraisal
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Insights
The traditional Chinese medicine diagnosis of Cold and Hot Syndromes based on tongue-coating appearance successfully detects signals in the tongue-coating microbiomes that are indicators of the entire body's status.
In summary, by studying the tongue-coating microbiomes of chronic atrophic gastritis patients and healthy controls using next-generation sequencing and bioinformatics analysis, we revealed the possible mechanism underlying the traditional tongue diagnosis and highlighted the potential for using tongue coating microbiome features as biomarkers to reflect the holistic status of the human body, especially in gastrointestinal diseases. The current sample size of this study is still small and further investigations with more samples and complete metagenome sequencing are needed for a comprehensive understanding of the system. The observations described here might provide a new direction for understanding the biological basis of TCM tongue diagnosis and the link between the “geographic tongue” and the human body's health status observed in modern Western medicine.
