[The reliance and significance of stability as a new way to reveal the essence of syndrome in Chinese medicine].

Stability is the important feature of the control system. Stability exists extensively in the biological systems such as different cell types during the process of individual development, new biological properties formed under the environment and/or diet factors, drug addition, long-term memory formation, and so on. The underlying mechanisms generally include epigenetically modification, the emergence of certain substance with long half life, the formation of positive feedback loop, and the activation of stem cells. Introduction of stability into researches of Chinese medicine syndrome is essentially to explore the mechanisms of quantitative changes into the qualitative alternation. It is also helpful for us to choose an appropriate time window of animal models for Chinese syndrome and to consider what are the core effects of Chinese materia medica in improving syndrome. The stability not only meets the features of Chinese medicine theories, but also agrees with the progress of modern systems theory and biology. We hope it could promote studies on Chinese medicine syndrome.