Associations between Traditional Chinese Medicine Body Constitution and Cardiovascular Disease Risk in a White population.

Background: Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has guided generations of practice on disease treatment and health maintenance. The TCM principles include the framework of body constitution. However, no study has assessed the body constitution in US population. Methods: This is an ancillary study of the Personalized Prevention of Colorectal Cancer Trial which conducted in US in 2012-2016. 191 white participants were evaluated for body constitution type using a self-administered Traditional Chinese Medicine Questionnaire (English version). The body constitution subtypes and cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk were assessed. Results: Fifty-seven (29.8%) were identified as balanced constitution (BC), while Blood-stasis (17.3%), Qi-deficient (13.6%), and inherited-special constitutions (10.5%) were the pre-eminent pathologic subtypes. Additional analyses investigated the relationship between CVD risk and body constitution subtypes. No major types of TCM body constitution were associated with the GCRS and other CVD biomarkers. Conclusions: It is important to understand the underlying mechanisms contributing to these differences, which may not only help to understand the underlying mechanism for TCM, but also help to identify novel factors or mechanisms for CVD risk, prevention and treatment.