[Analysis on similarity between traditional Chinese medicine syndromes and information on disease in patients with post-hepatitis cirrhosis].
OBJECTIVE
To explore the similarity between traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) syndromes and clinical symptoms and biological parameters in patients with post-hepatitis cirrhosis (PHC).


METHODS
After the variants had been normalized, 4 methods for similarity analysis, i.e. method of cosine distance, correlation coefficient, D and spectral similarity, were used to analyze the similarity of clinical characteristic information (symptoms), biological parameters and TCM syndromes obtained from 279 patients with PHC.


RESULTS
The corresponding similarity matrixes were used to reflect the similarity between TCM syndromes and symptoms and biological parameters respectively, results obtained by the 4 methods were basically identical. As compared with the traditional correlation coefficient analysis, the other three methods showed a higher level of matching, sensitivity, rationality in quantitative accepting-rejecting and reliability, and were more accordant with clinical practice.


CONCLUSIONS
The resemblance between TCM syndromes and clinical information on disease obtained from similarity analysis is basically in accordance with the clinical practice, so, the technique could be taken as a method for finding the characteristics of TCM syndrome with simplified clinical parameters.
Su
Yue
Y
Research Center for Traditional Chinese Medicine Complexity System, Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Shanghai. shibingsu@yahoo.com
Wang
Lei
L
Zhang
Hua
H
D006505:Hepatitis / Q000150:complications*; D006801:Humans; D008103:Liver Cirrhosis / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000209:etiology; D008516:Medicine, Chinese Traditional