Genome-wide association study of the four-constitution medicine

Abstract

Background: 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.

Objective: 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.

Design: 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.

Results: 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.

Conclusions: 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.