OBJECTIVETo explore the feasibility of Chinese medical syndrome identification in patients with post-hepatitis cirrhosis (PHC) by soft independent modeling of class analogy (SIMCA).

METHODSAfter variants were normalized, SIMCA was used to analyze clinical symptoms, physical signs, and biological parameters in 268 PHC patients, and the obtained distance of SIMCA was used to identify the syndromes of PHC. Some incorrect reasons were then tested by Mann-Whitney test.

RESULTSThe recognition rates of 5 Chinese medical syndromes (Gan depression and Pi deficiency syndrome, Gan-Shen yin-deficiency syndrome, Pi-Shen yang-deficiency syndrome, inner accumulation of dampness-heat syndrome, and stasis-heat accumulation syndrome) were 72.9% in the nearest class, and 17.91% in the sub-near class, as well as the total recognition rate was 90.3%. The highest recognition rate (95.24%) presented in the recognition on Gan-Shen yin-deficiency syndrome. Among some vital symptom variants of nearest class, significant difference could be found between identified and un-identified syndromes (P < 0.05).

CONCLUSIONIdentification of Chinese medical syndromes by SIMCA has rather higher goodness-of-fit with clinical practice, to set up a SIMCA depended syndrome identifying system could offer a useful reference for Chinese medical syndrome identification.