OBJECTIVETo find the objective indices for traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) pattern identification in women patients with climacteric hypertension (CH) by exploring the relationship between TCM pattern with blood levels of sex hormone, lipid and glucose.

METHODSTCM syndrome differentiation was made in 75 women CH patients, 43 as yin-deficiency with inner dryness pattern (YDD) and 32 as non-YDD, and correlation analyses were conducted on TCM patterns and blood levels of estradiol (E2), lipids and glucose.

RESULTSBesides the level of E2 in YDD was lower than that in non-YDD [(112.26 -/+ 66.81) pmol/L vs (146.69 +/- 83.59) pmol/L, P < 0.05), no difference between the two patterns was found in the other indices measured (P > 0.05). Further subunit analysis showed that in patients with CH grade 1, blood levels of total cholesterol (TC), high density lipoprotein (HDL) and apoprotein A-I (ApoA-I) were higher in the 13 patients of YDD than those in the 9 of non-TDD (P < 0.05); in patients with CH grade 2, levels of E2, progesterone (T), HDL and ApoA-I were lower but level of follicle stimulating hormone (FSH) was higher in the 20 YDD than those in the 10 non-YDD (all P < 0.05); while in patients with CH grade, no statistically significant difference was shown between 3 patients of 10 with YDD and 13 with non-YDD in all the indices measured (P > 0.05).

CONCLUSIONBlood level of E2 shows different characteristics between CH patients of YDD and non-YDD patterns, suggesting that it may provide some help to syndrome micro-differentiation, and taking it as an objective index for syndrome typing of climacteric hypertension in female is considerable.