Abstract: ObjectiveTo explore the characteristics of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) syndrome differentiation in chronic complications of type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM).Methods124 patients with chronic complications of type 2 DM were scored by 5 grades according as the severities of their symptoms. There were 5 kinds of patterns such as deficiency of Qi, deficiency of Yin, deficiency of Yang, blood stasis and retention of phlegm and fluid by which the TCM syndrome differentiation was generalized.ResultsThe sequence of TCM patterns was deficiency of Yin, blood stasis, deficiency of Qi, deficiency of Yang and retention of phlegm and fluid, and the syndrome of the two formers were greater than 50%. The proportion of unity of deficient and excessive pattern was 80.5%. Three larger syndrome types were deficiency of both Yin and Yang combined with blood stasis (17.7%), Qi-Yin deficiency with blood stasis ( 16.9 %) and Yin deficiency with blood stasis (16.9%). There was a statistically significant difference in TCM syndromes which were divided into different groups by course of diseases (P<0.05). At onset of DM, the typical symptoms were less observed in the group whose course of disease was less than 5 years, and only 39.1% of patients had the typical symptoms. But at the same time, the prevalences of hypertension and hyperlipidemia were higher in this group than in the others, respectively 63.0% and 87.0%.ConclusionThe primary syndrome is unity of deficient and excessive pattern in chronic complications of type 2 DM and deficiency of Qi and blood stasis are the commonest patterns in course of DM.

Key words: type 2 diabetes, chronic diabetic complications, TCM symptom pattern, TCM syndrome differentiation, Yin deficiency with blood stasis