Acupuncture and Meridian Science Research Center, Kyung Hee University, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
J Altern Complement Med. 2009 Dec;15(12):1327-33. doi: 10.1089/acm.2009.0205.
Four-constitution medicine (FCM), also known as Sasang constitutional medicine, and the heritage of the long history of individualized acupuncture medicine tradition, is one of the holistic and traditional systems of constitution to appraise and categorize individual differences into four major types.
This study first reports a genome-wide association study on FCM, to explore the genetic basis of FCM and facilitate the integration of FCM with conventional individual differences research.
Healthy individuals of the Korean population were classified into the four constitutional types (FCTs). A total of 353,202 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were typed using whole genome amplified samples, and six-way comparison of FCM types provided lists of significantly differential SNPs.
In one-to-one FCT comparisons, 15,944 SNPs were significantly differential, and 5 SNPs were commonly significant in all of the three comparisons. In one-to-two FCT comparisons, 22,616 SNPs were significantly differential, and 20 SNPs were commonly significant in all of the three comparison groups.
This study presents the association between genome-wide SNP profiles and the categorization of the FCM, and it could further provide a starting point of genome-based identification and research of the constitutions of FCM.
四象医学（FCM），又称沙桑体质医学，是历史悠久的个体化针灸医学传统的遗产，是评价和分类个体差异为四大类型的整体和传统体质系统之一。
本研究首次对 FCM 进行全基因组关联研究，探索 FCM 的遗传基础，促进 FCM 与常规个体差异研究的整合。
韩国人群的健康个体被分为四种体质类型（FCT）。使用全基因组扩增样本对 353202 个单核苷酸多态性（SNP）进行分型，并对 FCM 类型进行六向比较，提供差异显著 SNP 的列表。
在一对一 FCT 比较中，有 15944 个 SNP 差异显著，有 5 个 SNP 在所有三种比较中均显著。在一对一二 FCT 比较中，有 22616 个 SNP 差异显著，有 20 个 SNP 在所有三种比较组中均显著。
本研究揭示了全基因组 SNP 谱与 FCM 分类之间的关联，它可以为基于基因组的 FCM 体质识别和研究提供一个起点。
