DHerbKB for CKD: knowledge base of diet and toxic herbal medicines for clinical support of chronic kidney disease.

BACKGROUND

Dietary management and nephrotoxic herbal medicine control are essential and sophisticated in chronic kidney disease(CKD) care. Information gap between clinical principles and real-world practice hinders the relevant management. It is necessary to support the care using reliable informatic resources and tools.

METHODS

Principles of CKD dietary management were manually extracted from clinical guidelines. CKD complication-related nutrients data were fully exported from database of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the China Food Composition Tables. Oxalate contents of food were extracted from Harvard Oxalate Food List Revised November 2023 and Food Composition Table for Bangladesh. Information of toxic Chinese herbal medicine were collected from the Chinese Pharmacopoeia, online databases, literatures, and guidelines, and reviewed by nephrologists and herbalists. By connecting these structured knowledge/data according to clinical principles, the knowledge base named DHerbKB was created along with the recommendation system. To evaluate the DHerbKB, CKD cases with different complications were designed, and full-day dietary schedules covering 136 foods/cuisines were extracted from guidelines/literatures.

RESULTS

The DHerbKB is accessed by https://dherbkb.hywanglab.org.cn/ . Data of protein, energy, phosphorus, potassium, and sodium of 8,725 foods, and that of oxalate of 590 foods were included. A total of 21 herbs and 49 Chinese patent medicines containing aristolochic acids, 39 toxic herbs, 25 herbs with overdose toxicity, 13 herbs and 34 Chinese patent medicines rich in potassium were included. With 128 times of assessment by non-medical professional users, ease of use of the DHerbKB system was proved and only two wrong conclusions were made by the system because the user selected the same food with different processes.

CONCLUSIONS

The DHerbKB integrated and transformed the knowledge and data of CKD dietary management and toxic Chinese herbal medicines control into an easy-to-use and reliable system. Resource covered by the DHerbKB are opened for future researches regarding CKD care, toxic herbs control and related artificial intelligence.