Clinical Observation of Senile Idiopathic Nephrotic Syndrome Treated with Integrated Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine

Objective: To observe the clinical effect of integrated traditional Chinese and western medicine (TCM WM) in treating senile idiopathic nephrotic syndrome (SINS). Methods: Eighty two patients of SINS were randomly divided into two groups. The 41 patients in the TCM WM group were treated with prednisone, Cytoxan (CTX) and Chinese medicinal herbs according to Syndrome type, and the 41 patients in the control group were treated with western medicine alone. The clinical remission rate and time, recurrence rate in patients as well as adverse reaction rate occurred were observed. Results: The complete remission rate and total effective rate of the TCM WM group were 58.5% and 85.4%, which were significantly higher than those of the control group (39.0% and 63.4%, P <0.01). The adverse reaction rate in the TCM WM group was 36.6%, which was significantly lower than that of the control group (80.5%, P <0.01). A follow up of 35.1±9.7 months showed that there was no significant difference in the recurrence rate between the two groups ( P >0.05), but the average remission period (30.6±3.8 months) of the TCM WM group was significantly longer than that of the control group (12.7±3.7 months, P <0.01). Conclusion: TCM WM treatment is obviously superior to that with western medicine alone in increasing clinical remission rate, relieving adverse reaction rate and extending remission period.