OBJECTIVES:

We aimed at determining peptic ulcer disease (PUD) incidence among chronic kidney disease (CKD) patients during 1998-2008, compared to patients without CKD, and at examining associations between CKD and PUD.

METHODS:

Data for 1998-2008 were extracted from the National Health Insurance Research Database in Taiwan. The annual PUD incidence (cases per thousand persons per year) was calculated separately for patients with and without CKD. Characteristics of patients with newly diagnosed PUD (n = 16322) were compared to those of a control group without PUD (n = 32644). The 2 groups were matched for age, sex, and index year. Odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) were estimated by logistic regression.

RESULTS:

Over the 10-year period, the PUD incidence was ∼10-12 times higher in CKD patients than in those without CKD. Its incidence in elderly CKD patients increased rapidly over time. For CKD patients, most PUD events (>95%) were managed during hospitalization. Peptic ulcer risk, adjusted for all potential confounders, was much higher in CKD patients undergoing hemodialysis (adjusted OR, 9.74; 95% CI, 7.11-13.31). Maintenance hemodialysis patients were 2 times more likely to have gastric ulcers than duodenal ulcers, while CKD patients not on dialysis had similar risks for both. There were no significant interactions between medications and CKD status on the peptic ulcer risk. Unlike CKD patients on nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and clopidogrel, those on aspirin did not have a higher peptic ulcer risk (adjusted OR, 0.88; 95% CI, 0.44-1.77).

CONCLUSIONS:

OBJECTIVES:

Female patients have frequently utilized Chinese medicine (CM) to treat symptoms that could possibly be related to endometriosis. The objective of this population-based retrospective cohort study was to evaluate the relationship between CM use and subsequent surgery among patients with endometriosis.

DESIGN:

A total of 8,283 CM users were identified among the 22,488 endometriosis patients found in the National Health Insurance reimbursement database between 2000 and 2010. A control group was identified and consisted of 8,283 matched nonusers with the same disease. A Cox proportional regression analysis was performed in order to assess risk factors for surgery for the CM users and nonusers.

RESULTS:

When compared to nonusers, CM users were significantly less likely to undergo surgery, with a hazard ratio of 0.47 (95% CI=0.421, 0.534) after adjusting for age, occupation, childbirth status, hypermenorrhea, iron-deficient anemia, dysmenorrhea, and amount of conventional medications. Among patients who had undergone surgery, the follow-up time was longer for CM users than for CM nonusers (p<0.001). Moreover, the most frequently used CM single and formula were Cyperus rotundus and Gui-zhi-fu-ling-wan, respectively.

CONCLUSIONS:

These results suggest that whatever the underlying reason, CM provides an alternative option that reduces the incidence rate of surgery in endometriosis patients.

BACKGROUND CONTEXT:

Previous studies on the risk and prevalence of diabetes among spinal cord injury (SCI) patients are limited and controversial.

PURPOSE:

To compare the risk and incidence rate (IR) of Type 2 diabetes in SCI and non-SCI patients.

STUDY DESIGN:

This is a population-based retrospective cohort study.

PATIENT SAMPLE:

Data from Taiwan's National Health Insurance Research Database for the period 1997 to 2010 were analyzed. Patients aged 20 years and older newly identified with SCIs during this period were included in the SCI cohort. A non-SCI comparison cohort was randomly selected from National Health Insurance beneficiaries and matched with the SCI cohort based on age, sex, and index date.

OUTCOME MEASURES:

Both cohorts were followed until the first of the following occurred: the diagnosis of Type 2 diabetes (International Classification of Disease, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification codes 250), withdrawal from the insurance system, the end of 2010, or death.

METHODS:

A Cox proportional hazards regression analysis was used to estimate the risk of developing diabetes.

RESULTS:

Taiwan possesses an older SCI population, with a mean age of 51.6 years. The IR for diabetes in patients with and without SCIs was 22.1 per 10,000 person-years and 17.2 per 10,000 person-years, respectively. The adjusted hazard ratio (HR) for diabetes was 1.33 times higher in patients with SCIs than in those without SCIs. In patients with SCIs, men (adjusted HR=1.23, 95% confidence interval (CI)=1.04-1.44), older people (adjusted HR=4.26 in patients older than 65 years, 95% CI=3.16-5.74), patients with comorbidity (adjusted HR=1.36, 95% CI=1.14-1.62), and patients with a complete thoracic SCI (T-spine injury) (adjusted HR=2.13, 95% CI=0.95-4.79) were more likely to be diagnosed with diabetes than other patient subgroups.

CONCLUSIONS:

Our findings may facilitate the prioritizing of preventive health strategies and planning of long-term care for SCI patients.

BACKGROUND & AIMS:

The association between Helicobacter pylori infection and end-stage renal disease (ESRD) events remains unknown. We assessed the relationship between H. pylori infection requiring hospital admission and the subsequent risks of ESRD.

METHODS:

This was a retrospective cohort study in which data from the National Health Insurance system of Taiwan was used. The H. pylori-infected cohort comprised 20,068 patients. Each participant was frequency-matched by age and sex with 4 individuals from the general population without H. pylori-infected. Cox proportional hazards regression analysis was used to estimate the influence of H. pylori infection on the risk of ESRD.

RESULTS:

The overall incidence of ESRD was 3.72 times greater in the H. pylori-infected cohort than in the non-infected cohort (11.1 vs. 2.96 per 1000 person-years), with an adjusted HR of 2.58 [95% confidence interval (CI)=2.33-2.86]. The risk of ESRD markedly increased in patients with H. pylori infection combined with at least one of the following concomitant comorbidities: hypertension, diabetes, hyperlipidaemia and coronary artery disease.

CONCLUSIONS:

This is currently the largest nation-based study in which the risk of ESRD in H. pylori-infected patients was examined. H. pylori infection was associated with a subsequent risk of ESRD. H. pylori-infected patients with concomitant chronic kidney disease (CKD) or cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors were at higher risk of ESRD than were those who had a single CKD or CVD risk factor.

PURPOSE:

This study evaluated the effect of epilepsy on the development of hyperlipidemia (HL) in Taiwan.

METHODS:

We conducted a nationwide population-based cohort study based on data obtained from the National Health Insurance Research Database of Taiwan. We identified 990 cases involving patients whose epilepsy was newly diagnosed between 2000 and 2005, and we also selected a comparison cohort comprising 3960 patients without epilepsy. Cox proportional hazards regression models were used to examine the association between epilepsy and HL.

RESULTS:

The mean follow-up period was 6.63 years for the epilepsy cohort and 7.49 years for the comparison cohort. The incidence rate of HL was 1.28-fold higher in the epilepsy cohort than it was in the comparison cohort (34.14 vs. 26.96 per 1000 person-years), with an adjusted hazard ratio of 1.17 (95% confidence interval, 1.01-1.36) after adjusting the model to account for the effects of sex and comorbidities. The most at-risk patients were those aged 50 to 59 years (hazard ratio, 1.35; 95% confidence interval, 1.04-1.79). For the epilepsy patients, the combined effect of ischemic heart disease, hypertension, and diabetes was associated with a significantly higher risk of developing HL compared with the patients with neither epilepsy nor any comorbidity.

CONCLUSIONS:

Middle-aged epilepsy patients are at a significantly higher risk of developing HL. The results could assist in explaining the high risk of cerebral and cardiac vascular disease in epilepsy patients.