Associations between Traditional Chinese Medicine Body Constitution and Cardiovascular Disease Risk in a White population

Introduction Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has guided generations of practice on disease treatment and health maintenance. The TCM principles include the framework of body constitution (BC). In essence, it represents one of the first attempts at applying the principle of personalized, precision medicine. Major limitations to broad implementation of the body constitution (BC) framework, and perhaps TCM as a whole, include not only a lack of empirical study about its relation to other models of health maintenance but also a poor understanding of its applicability outside of Chinese population. Methods We conducted a study using baseline data from the Personalized Prevention of Colorectal Cancer Trial. 191 participants from an almost entirely White population were evaluated for BC type. Results Fifty-seven (29.8%) were identified as neutral BC, while Blood-stasis (17.3%), Qi-deficient (13.6%), and Special diathesis (10.5%) were the pre-eminent pathologic subtypes. We also found there are substantial differences in proportions of TCM BC types in our study of white Americans conducted in US from previous studies conducted in Chinese populations. Additional analyses investigated the relationship between cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk and BC subtypes. Among them, Yang-deficiency, Yin-deficiency, and Blood stasis carried a lower risk of CVD. Conclusions It is important to understand the underlying mechanisms contributing to these differences, which may not only help to understand the underlying mechanism for TCM, but also help to identify novel factors or mechanisms for CVD risk, prevention and treatment.