Study Of Factors Associated With Dementia In The View Of Traditional Chinese Medicine

PURPOUSOn the basis of the information derived from numerous and various complicated dementia cases, we analyzed the main symptoms of dementia: such as incidence, disease location, pathological factors, pathogenesis, clinical syndromes and clinical manifestations, etc. we also take a further step to explore its relationships to heart, brain and other internal organs.METHODDuring my graduate study,I collected nearly all of the dementia cases in Jiangsu Province Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital and Nanjing Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital. Totally,244 clinical cases, which met the requriments and conditions, were collected and stored in the base by Medcase V3.2 system, and then analyzed the computational model using strengthened correlation rule. The relationships and correlations between syndrome and ECG data, brain imaging data were carefully analyzed and summarized.RESULTThe results of this study show that the closely related clinical manifestations to dementia are amnesia, dullness of mind, abate of calculating and understanding ability, lethargy, ahypnosis, barylalia, gatism, and cough. By the statistics of symptom frequencies, correlated calculation and cluster analysis, we found that the most common syndromes of dementia are the yin deficiencies of liver and kidney; the impairments of liver and kidney; and the phlegm-stasis in channels. By combining ECG data, brain imaging data together with the symptoms and syndromes of dementia casesit was discovered that dementia cases are closely related to cardiovascular diseases. Combined with traditional Chinese medicine theory, we correlated the dementia cases with twenty-four solar terms, and found that the incidences of dementia are strongly related to the change of yin and yang.CONCLUSIONAlzheimer’s disease locates in the brain, mainly in the old age. The pathogenesis of dementia are mainly the deficiencies of liver and kidney, the impairments of liver and kidney, and the phlegm-stasis in channels. The most common types are yin deficiencies of liver and kidney; impairment of liver and kidney; phlegm-stasis in channels. From the main symptoms as discussed and summarized above, we could conclude that the yin deficiencies of liver and kidney are mostly at the early and middle stages, serving as the evidences of yang; the impairments of liver and kidney are mostly at the middle and late stages, serving as the evidences of yin; while the phlegm-stasis in channels are more serious and complicated.