Abstract: AIM: Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) has been practiced in China for thousands of years, providing a unique theoretical and practical approach to the treatment of diseases.In TCM theory, the notions of the “whole” and the use of “ system” rather than isolation are important concepts, which well fit to systems biology theory.In the present study, we try to discover whether GC/MS-based metabolomics approaches contribute to differentiate the TCM syndrome types of hypertension. METHODS: The three phenotypes of constitution in patients with essential hypertension, the hyperactivity of liver yang type, tan shi yong sheng type and yin xu yang kang type, were classified by TCM approach. Serum metabolomic profiles for healthy persons and hypertension patients were acquired using GC/MS global analysis. Principal components analysis (PCA), partial least squares-discriminant analysis (PLS-DA), and Mahlanobis distance (MD) were applied to facilitate the metabolomics data differentiation and prediction. RESULTS: Using PCA and PLS-DA, it was capable of distinguishing normal blood pressure serum samples from those of the TCM syndrome types, while failed to discriminate the three TCM syndrome types of hypertension from each other. Further MD analysis contributed not only to a fine differentiation, but also to a clear exhibition of the progression, of the three syndrome types. CONCLUSION: This pilot study suggests that the metabolomics approach might be a powerful tool for exploring the scientific essence of the TCM theory.

Key words: metabolomics, syndrome types, hypertension, GC/MS