Discrimination of TCM constitutions by biochemical and routine urine indexes

Abstract

Objective: To investigate whether the specific traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) constitution of individuals can be defined by certain biological indexes instead of answering the questionnaire, and to explore the possibility of discriminating nine TCM constitutions from each other simultaneously using biological indexes. Methods: Blood and urine samples from 152 individuals with nine TCM constitutions were collected, and the related biological indexes were analyzed combining ANOVA, multiple comparison, discriminant analysis, and support vector machine. Results: We found that 4 out of 24 blood routine indexes, 7 out of 10 urine routine indexes, and 12 out of 32 biochemical indexes showed differences among the constitutions. High-sensitivity C-reactive protein, apolipoprotein A1, and alkaline phosphatase were potential candidates for screening out individuals with unbalanced constitutions. Combining uric acid, high-density lipoprotein, apolipoprotein A1, creatine kinase, total protein, aspartate aminotransferase, total bile acid, dehydrogenase, sodium, and calcium levels had the potential to directly distinguish the nine TCM constitutions from each other. Among these indexes, the highest ratio of discriminant analysis between two constitutions was 95.5%, while the lowest was 66.1%. Conclusion: Our results suggest that some biochemical and urine indexes are related to various TCM constitutions, and thus they have the potential to be used for TCM constitution classification.

Keywords

• Traditional Chinese medicine
• Constitution classification
• Balance constitution
• Unbalanced constitutions
• Biochemical indexes
• Routine urine indexes