A study on traditional medicine body constitution types in residential community of District 4, Ho Chi Minh City

Introduction: Body constitution (BC) is widely applied in daily clinical practice by Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) practitioners. The BC is innate depending on the intrinsic properties of the human body and is influenced by the environment. The most common diagnostic tool of physiological BC types is the Constitution in Chinese Medicine Questionnaire (CCMQ). This study was conducted to determine the proportion of nine TCM constitution types and comorbidities observed in the community of District 4, Ho Chi Minh City. Methods: A cross-sectional design was applied to collect data for this study. All the participants were classified as BC types by the CCMQ. The collected data were statistically analyzed with the SPSS 22.0 software. Results: There were 436 participants aged from 18 (163 males; 273 females) enrolled in this study from 05/2021 – 06/2021 in District 4. Five comorbidities were observed including hypertension (23.6%), cardiovascular diseases (13.1%), diabetes (11.5%), hyperlipidemia (8.3%) and obesity (4.1%). In participants, the prevalence of nine BC types were Neutral (62.4%), Qi-deficiency (17.2%), Qi-depression (15.6%), Inherited-special (8.9%), Yang-deficiency (8.3%), Blood-stasis (8.0%), Yin-deficiency (7.6%), Phlegm-dampness (6.4%), and Dampness-heat (5.7%). The Qi-deficiency type was significantly associated with ages, genders, hypertension and cardiovascular diseases while the Dampness-heat one was related to gender. Conclusions: Among the participants in District 4, Ho Chi Minh City, hypertension (23.6%) is the most common comorbidity. Neutral (62.4%) is the majority in BC types. The associations between BC types and ages, genders, jobs, five chronic diseases were different.