Classification and differentiation between kidney yang and yin decficiency syndromes in TCM based on decision tree analysis method

The classification and differentiation between kidney Yang and Yin deficiency syndromes (KDS-YANG and KDS-YIN) in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) was performed with the approaches of decision tree as well as logistic regression analysis. A clinical epidemiology study on 44 symptoms, 5 tongue signs and 2 pulse signs (TCM diagnostic features) was conducted among 2,765 patients with KDS. Accordingly, an effective syndrome-identifying model on KDS-YANG and KDS-YIN was established. The results indicated that in terms of statistical significance (P < 0.05) of the cases with the above two different syndromes, the diagnostic indicators such as 11 symptoms, 2 tongue signs, and 1 pulse signs was found out by logistic regression analysis. The accurate rate of differentiating KDS-YANG and KDS-YIN was proved to be 88.0%. What’s more, four symptoms-aversion to cold, cold limbs, pale tongue, deep and thread pulse-were confirmed to be the most significant variables, which was beneficial for the syndrome differentiation. The decision tree analysis model was an effective approach to differentiate KDS-YANG and KDS YIN, which could be helpful to change the syndrome-diagnosing method from experience-based to datamodel based.