Exploration of influential factors about deficiency constitution of Traditional Chinese Medicine based on multi-methods.

Objective: To find more influencing factors Qi-deficiency constitution of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) using dynamic and comprehensive information.

Methods: Because grey relational analysis (GRA) is good at processing incomplete information and has no special requirements for sample size and distribution. We acquired 2122 pieces of valid Qi-deficiency constitution dynamic data after preprocessing, and used GRA combing with χ ² test and multivariate logistic regression analysis to discover and sort the influencing factors of Qi-deficiency constitution.

Results: For the calculation results of GRA, there were 10 (62.5%) aspects whose grey correlation degrees were greater than 0.6. The results of χ ² test showed that all the above 10 aspects were statistically significant with Qi-deficiency constitution. The analysis results of multivariate logistic regression analysis showed the following factors were positively correlated with Qi-deficiency constitution: premature birth, sleeping late and getting up early, sleeping late and getting up late, irregular sleeping, sleeping 6.0-6.9 h per day, artificial feeding, female, age at 18-19, and father's age at 18-19 years old when a baby at birth. The following factors were negatively correlated with Qi-deficiency constitution: sleeping 8.0-8.9 h per day and ≥ 9.0 h per day, and age at 30-39 and 40-49 years old.

Conclusions: It is necessary to pay attention to these innate and acquired information of individuals which may lead to Qi-deficiency constitution. And our research also provides a novel methodological thinking for analyzing the influential factors of TCM constitution.