Research Article Traditional Chinese Medicine ZHENG Identification Provides a Novel Stratification Approach in Patients with Allergic Rhinitis

Copyright © 2012 Kai-Li Liang et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Background. We aimed to apply the ZHENG identification to provide an easy and useful tool to stratify the patients with allergic rhinitis (AR) through exploring the correlation between the quantified scores of AR symptoms and the TCM ZHENGs. Methods. A total of 114 AR patients were enrolled in this observational study. All participants received the examinations of anterior rhinoscopy and acoustic rhinometry. Their blood samples were collected for measurement of total serum immunoglobulin E (IgE), blood eosinophil count (Eos), and serum eosinophil cationic protein (ECP). They also received two questionnaire to assess the severity scores of AR symptoms and quantified TCM ZHENG scores. Multiple linear regression analysis was used to determine explanatory factors for the score of AR manifestations. Results. IgE and ECP level, duration of AR, the 2 derived TCMZHENG scores of “Yin-Xu − Yang-Xu”, and “Qi-Xu + Blood-Xu ” were 5 explanatory variables to predict the severity scores of AR symptoms. The patients who had higher scores of “Yin-Xu − Yang-Xu ” or “Qi-Xu + Blood-Xu ” tended to manifest as “sneezer and runner ” or “blockers,