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.