Nephrotic syndrome (NS) results from a common set of clinical kidney diseases, and is often recurrent, persistently refractory, and with poor prognosis. Its symptoms are relevant to the concepts of "edema" , "urinary turbidity" "lumbago" , and "uroschesis" of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) theory. In this article, the TCM etiology and pathogenesis of NS was discussed and investigated from its characteristic features including heavy proteinuria, hypoalbuminemia, highly edema, hyperlipidemia, and/or blood hypercoagulability, etc, in order to provide evidence for the treatment of NS with clinical syndrome differentiation method of TCM.