Study On The Distribution Of TCM Symptoms In Comorbid Anxiety And Depression

BackgroundComorbid anxiety and depression(CAD) patients have anxiety symptoms and depression symptoms at the same time. When compared with simple anxiety disorder or depressive disorder, CAD’s condition is more complex, the symptom is not typical and the clinical discrimination rate is low. CAD seriously affects people’s social function and physical and mental health. At present, western medicine treatment has the characteristics of expensive price, big side effect and poor compliance. Traditional Chinese Medicine(TCM) treatment have advantages of the treatment based on syndrome, treatment chosen according to the variability of an individual, fewer side effects, but there is no uniform understanding and standard of TCM syndrome differentiation and traditional Chinese medicine treatment of CAD due to the complexity and diversity of CAD symptoms. Doctor’s treatment of CAD comes from their own experience and lacks objective clinical criteria.ObjectiveTo study out the clinical distribution of common TCM syndromes by investigating the symptoms of a certain CAD patients and discussing the relationship between TCM syndromes with the degree of anxiety and depression.Methods1. A scale of observation of TCM comorbid anxiety and depression Syndromes was formulated including TCM comorbid anxiety and depression symptoms and HAMA anxiety scale, HAMD depression scale by expert group.118 patients from Lianyungang Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine with CAD were investigated and scaled. The main symptoms were scored as 0,2,4,6; the secondary symptoms were scored as 0,1,2,3.2. The dimension of symptom information were reduced by using exploratory factor analysis (EFA). And the corresponding relationship between syndrome and syndrome were established. The common TCM Syndrome Types were analyzed on the base of TCM theory, expert’s experience and the corresponding relationship between syndrome and syndrome.3. The relationship among gender, age, TCM syndromes and the degree of anxiety and depression was analyzed through statistical analysis.Results1. In 118 cases, Male accounted for 32.2%,femal accounted for 67.8%, the ratio of male and female is about 1:2.1. The patients of 18-35 years old accounted for 19.5%; the patients of 36-55 years old accounted for 57.6%, the patients of 56-65 years old accounted for 22.9%. Mild anxiety and depression patients accounted for 70.3%, the moderate patients accounted for 22%, severe patients 7.7%.2. With the application of statistical and EFA method,6 TCM syndromes were worked out: yin deficiency of liver and kidney, hyperactivity of heart-fire and liver-fire, deficiency of heart and spleen, depression of liver-qi, blood stasis due to qi deficiency, accumulation phlegm-heat in the interior.3. The syndromes of anxiety and depression of female was more severe than male, the syndromes of anxiety and depression of young pepole was more severe than other ages people.ConclusionThe 6 TCM syndromes were worked out. And the syndrome elements of liver occupies the main position in the TCM syndrome type distribution. The degree of anxiety and depression of yin deficiency of liver and kidney is more serious than others.