Synonyms
Microbiome in tongue coating; Tongue-coating microbial composition
Definition
Tongue diagnosis is a noninvasive, simple, and unique method in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). TCM practitioners use the color and texture of tongues as a holistic summary of patients’ statuses. It is an important factor in the diagnosis of a patient’s “ZHENG,” an abstraction of TCM syndrome. The tongue diagnosis has been used in TCM for thousands of years. However, scientific understandings of the biological basis underlying traditional tongue diagnosis are still very limited. We inferred that the microbiome composition of tongue coating may affect the tongue appearance and also could be associated with characteristics of human body especially the digestive system.
This entry discusses how traditional tongue diagnosis can be associated with the tongue-coating microbiome by next-generation sequencing technique and bioinformatics analysis. It also highlights the potential of the tongue-coating...
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Li, S., Zhang, X. (2015). Tongue-Coating Microbiome Characterized by the Next-Generation Sequencing and Traditional Tongue Diagnosis. In: Highlander, S.K., Rodriguez-Valera, F., White, B.A. (eds) Encyclopedia of Metagenomics. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-7475-4_229
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-7475-4_229
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