Abstract
We have conducted questionnaire and measured serum kidney function tests on 156 patients whom have received a treatment at a local Oriental medicine clinic in Seoul from Sept. 1, 2002 to Dec. 31, 2002. Patients were categorized into five groups. The groups are control(10 samples), herbal extract group(41 samples), herbal pills group(5samples), western medicines(45samples), and combination group(55 samples). This study was conducted to investigate how these treatment methods can affect the kidney functions. Following results were obtained : 1) Most of the research subjects were male(103 individuals) living in large urban area, with a drinking habit, highly educated, and with normal marriage. For the treatment history, 45 individuals received western medicine treatment(28.85%), 46 with Oriental medicine(29.49%), and 55patients (35.26%) experienced both forms of the treatment. 2) For measuring Mean(SD) of serum kidney functions for all the research subjects, Bun was 12.16(3.90)g/dl, 0.51(0.19) g/dl for Creatinine, and 4.64(1.49)g/dl for Uric acid. All the measurements were within the normal range. 3) Confounding variables which may affect the kidney functions such as age, smoking, drinking, occupation, and residency were eliminated in calculation and no significant differences were witnessed between the control and experiment groups. 4) In measuring affects of treatment duration on the kidney functions, no statistical significances were shown in multiple regression's ${\beta}(SE)$ values. 5) Correlations affecting the kidney functions are duration of drinking, drinking volume per round, drinking volume per week, smoking, gender, and age difference caused significant correlations. From the above results, we can deduce that taking herbal and western medicine didn't cause significant effects between the control and experiment groups in the kidney functions. Further research is needed in this field to verify this evidence by adding odds ratios and etc.