Implicit Structural Model Of Kidney Deficiency Syndrome

Syndrome Differentiation of the Kidney Deficiency (SDKD) is an important part in the syndrome theory of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), which comes from the thinking of the human brain with analyzing rules of a great many of the cases, based on the learning from the ancient Chinese medical documents and accumulating individual experiences, guided by the theory of TCM. So it is sure that the syndrome theory of TCM is a little empirical, subjective, and lack of less quantity and standardization. It has been proved that the quantification and standardization of the syndrome is hard to succeed with the traditional methods, and is crying for innovation in the method and technology. This paper discusses Latent Class Analysis (LCA) and Latent Structure Models (LSM) on the study of the quantification and standardization of the kidney deficiency syndrome, including two parts, the theoretical research and the clinical research. 1 Theoretical Research1.1 Basic Structure of Kidney Deficiency SyndromeThe representation of the physiology and pathology of the Kidney certainly includes four aspects, namely, essence, qi, yin and yang. The locational symptoms of Kidney Deficiency (KD) can be shown in obstacle of development and reproduction, irregularity of liquid metabolizing, and symptoms of pee and stool, marrow, bone, ear, hair and tooth; The characteristic symptoms include essence lose, qi deficiency, yin deficiency, yang deficiency, deficiency of both yin and yang and water diffusion resulted from qi and yang deficiency, and failing to control respiring qi and consolidation resulted from qi deficiency.There are four different levels in the Kidney Deficiency Syndromes (KDS). The first is KD; The second is insufficiency of kidney essence and kidney qi deficiency; The third is kidney yang deficiency and kidney yin deficiency; The fourth is deficiency of both yin and yang. The deficiency of kidney qi includes sub-syndrome of non-consolidation of kidney qi and sub-syndrome of failing to control respiring qi due to deficiency of kidney qi. Insufficiency of kidney essence includes sub-syndrome of marrow deficiency due to kidney deficiency and sub-syndrome of deficiency of both essence and blood. Deficiency of kidney yang includes sub-syndrome of failing to warm spleen due to the decline of vital gate fire, sub-syndrome of water diffusion due to deficiency of kidney yang, sub-syndrome of cold-dampness due to kidney deficiency, sub-syndrome of coagulated cold due to deficiency of kidney yang. Syndrome of deficiency of kidney yin includes sub-syndrome of endogenous heat due to kidney yin deficiency and sub-syndrome of hyperactivity of fire due to deficiency of kidney yin.1.2 Latent Class Analysis and Hierarchical Latent Class ModelsAt present, the LCA has been widely applied in many different fields, such as social science, psychics, economics, politics and education, even has been applied in establishing and confirming the diagnostic criteria of many diseases. The LCA can not only describe and survey the hidden factors / subtypes, find the subtypes and numbers of the subtypes, explore the latent...