ArticleFrontiers in pharmacology2026
Pharmacotherapy of the spleen and stomach in Li Shizhen's Bencao Gangmu (Compendium of materia medica, 1596): a text-statistical analysis of 994 entries and a bridge to modern pharmacology.
Article in Frontiers in pharmacology, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Background: Bencao Gangmu (, 1596), Li Shizhen's Compendium of Materia Medica, is among the most comprehensive pre-modern compilations of East Asian materia medica, yet the full-text distribution of its content on the spleen-stomach ( Aim of the study: To construct a reproducible text-statistical inventory of all spleen- and stomach-related entries in Bencao Gangmu; to characterize the resulting pharmacopoeia by plant identity, taste-nature ( Materials and methods: The Jinling (1596) edition was searched in full text for Results: Of 994 retained entries, 703 specified a concrete drug or therapy. The most frequent botanical drugs were Conclusion: Bencao Gangmu codifies a balanced spleen-stomach pharmacotherapy prioritizing sweet-warm tonification counterweighted by a deliberate cooling-draining arm. The leading botanical drugs converge on phytochemical leads, including atractylenolides, gingerols/shogaols, atractylodin/β-eudesmol, berberine and processed-
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.