Increased risk of a herpes zoster attack in patients receiving androgen deprivation therapy for prostate cancer.

This study aimed to examine the association of herpes zoster (HZ) with androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) use among patients with prostate cancer (PC), using a population-based data set. The study sample for this study was retrieved from the Taiwan Longitudinal Health Insurance Database 2005. We selected 877 patients with PC who had received ADT as the study group, while 849 patients with PC who had not received ADT served as the comparison group. Each study patient was individually tracked for a 3-year period to discriminate those who subsequently received a diagnosis of HZ. Of the total 1,726 sampled patients, the incidence rate of HZ per 100 person-years was 1.80 (95% CI: 1.41-2.25) during the 3-year follow-up period. In particular, incidence rates of HZ per 100 person-years were 2.36 (95% CI: 1.75-3.13) and 1.24 (95% CI: 0.81-1.81), respectively, for patients with PC who had and those who had not received ADT. Furthermore, Cox proportional hazard regressions showed that the adjusted hazard ratio for an HZ attack during the 3-year follow-up period for patients with PC who had received ADT was 1.88 (95% CI: 1.13-3.11) than those who had not received ADT. We concluded that patients with PC who had received ADT had an increased risk of HZ.

Use of health care services by patients with psoriasis: a population-based study.

BACKGROUND: Although psoriasis is seldom life threatening, very few studies have compared differences in health care service use between patients with and without psoriasis. OBJECTIVES: To investigate differences in health care service use between patients with and without psoriasis. METHODS: Patient details and data on their use of health services were retrieved from the Taiwan Longitudinal Health Insurance Database 2000. We included 3649 patients with psoriasis and 3649 without it. Each patient was followed for a 1-year period to estimate their utilization of health care resources. Student t-tests were used to compare differences in health care services use between patients with and without psoriasis. RESULTS: For dermatology services, patients with psoriasis had significantly more outpatient visits (3·5 vs. 0·9), and higher outpatient and total costs (US$148·00 vs. US$12·20 and US$581·60 vs. US$347·20, respectively) than those without psoriasis. For nondermatology services, patients with psoriasis had more outpatient visits (21·3 vs. 17·6), and higher outpatient and total costs (US$904·60 vs. US$663·50 and US$1335·50 vs. US$998·30, respectively) than those without psoriasis. For overall health care service use, patients with psoriasis had significantly more outpatient visits (24·8 vs. 18·5; P < 0·01) and greater total costs (US$1917·10 vs. US$1345·60; P < 0·01) than those without psoriasis. This indicates that the total cost was about 1·4-fold greater for patients with psoriasis than those without it. CONCLUSIONS: Patients with psoriasis used health care services significantly more often than those without psoriasis.

Statin Use Is Associated with Bladder Pain Syndrome/Interstitial Cystitis: A Population-Based Case-Control Study.

INTRODUCTION: Statin may induce epithelial dysfunction of the bladder urothelium. Epithelial dysfunction was proposed as one of the major potential etiologies for bladder pain syndrome/interstitial cystitis (BPS/IC). In this study, we examined the association between statin use and BPS/IC using a population-based study. SUBJECTS AND METHODS: This case-control study used the Taiwan Longitudinal Health Insurance Database. In total, 815 female subjects with BPS/IC and 4075 randomly selected female controls were included. We used a conditional logistic regression to compute the odds ratio (OR) for having previously used statins between cases and controls. RESULTS: A conditional logistic regression analysis showed that the OR of prior statin users for cases was 1.52 (95% confidence interval (CI): 1.19-1.94) compared to controls after adjusting for diabetes, hypertension, coronary heart disease, obesity, chronic pelvic pain, irritable bowel syndrome, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, depression, panic disorder, migraines, sicca syndrome, allergies, endometriosis, and asthma. Furthermore, adjusted ORs of regular and irregular statin use for cases were 1.58 (95% CI: 1.20-2.08) and 1.53 (95% CI: 1.02-2.31), respectively, compared to controls. CONCLUSION: We concluded that there was an association between statin use and BPS/IC.

Risk factors of involuntary referral by police to ER psychiatric services for patients with a severe mental illness: A GEE analysis.

This study aimed to identify risk factors for involuntary referral by police to emergency room (ER) psychiatric services for community-based patients with a mental illness via a generalized estimating equation (GEE) analysis. The analysis was based on data from the Management Information System of Psychiatric Care (MISPC) system for patients with a severe mental illness in Taipei, Taiwan and registered referral records of the police. Data on 6378 patients aged ≥20 years were used in this study, including 164 patients who were involuntarily referred to the ER by the police and 6214 patients who were not during the period of January 1, 2018 to December 31, 2020. GEEs were utilized to explore possible risk factors of repeated involuntary referral to ER psychiatric services for patients with a severe mental illness. The logistic regressions indicated that patients defined as "severe" according to the Mental Health Act of Taiwan (crude odds ratio (OR): 3.840, 95 % confidence interval (CI): 2.407-6.126), with a disability (crude OR: 3.567, 95 % CI: 1.339-9.501), with two or more family members with a psychiatric disorder (crude OR: 1.598, 95 % CI: 1.002-2.548), with a history of a suicide attempt (crude OR: 25.582, 95 % CI: 17.608-37.167), and with a history of domestic violence (crude OR: 16.141, 95 % CI: 11.539-22.579) were positively associated with involuntary referral to ER psychiatric services. However, age (crude OR: 0.971, 95 % CI: 0.960-0.983) and the MISPC score (crude OR: 0.834, 95 % CI: 0.800-0.869) were inversely associated with involuntary referral to ER psychiatric services. After adjusting for demographics and potential confounders, we found that patients defined as "severe" (Exp (ß): 3.236), with a disability (Exp (ß): 3.715), with a history of a suicide attempt (Exp (ß): 8.706), and with a history of domestic violence (Exp (ß): 8.826), as well as age (Exp (ß): 0.986) and the MISPC score (Exp (ß): 0.902) remained significantly associated with repeated involuntary referral to ER psychiatric services. In conclusion, community-based mentally ill patients with a history of a suicide attempt, with a history of domestic violence, with a severe illness, and with a profound level of disability were highly associated with involuntary referral to ER psychiatric services. We suggest that community mental health case managers identify significant factors associated with involuntary referral to ER psychiatric services to accordingly arrange case management plans.

Association between open-angle glaucoma and neovascular age-related macular degeneration: a case-control study.

PurposeTo investigate the relationship between previously diagnosed open-angle glaucoma (OAG) and neovascular age-related macular degeneration (AMD) using a routine insurance dataset.MethodsThis study retrieved data from the Taiwan Longitudinal Health Insurance Database 2005. We found 3282 patients with neovascular AMD as cases and 13 128 sex- and age-matched subjects without neovascular AMD as controls. Conditional logistic regressions were performed to evaluate the association of neovascular AMD with previously diagnosed OAG among the sampled patients.ResultsOf the 16 410 sampled patients, 2.55% had previously diagnosed OAG, 5.06 and 1.92% for the cases and controls, respectively. The logistic regression analysis showed that the odds ratio (OR) of previously diagnosed OAG for cases was 2.45 (OR: 2.45; 95% confidence interval: 1.99-3.01) compared with the controls after adjusting for potential confounders. In addition, the adjusted ORs for previously diagnosed OAG were similar for patients with AMD in both genders (with an adjusted OR of 2.49 for males and 2.39 for females). Furthermore, it shows that OAG was significantly associated with neovascular AMD regardless of sex even after adjusting for monthly income, geographic region, urbanisation level, and comorbidities (with adjusted ORs of 2.49 for males and 2.39 for females).ConclusionsThis study demonstrated that patients with neovascular AMD had a higher odds of previously diagnosed OAG compared with those patients without neovascular AMD regardless of sex.

Sudden sensorineural hearing loss is associated with chronic rhinosinusitis: population-based study.

BACKGROUND: This study aimed to evaluate the association of chronic rhinosinusitis with sudden sensorineural hearing loss using a population-based database. METHODS: Sampled subject data were obtained from the Taiwan Longitudinal Health Insurance Database 2000. A total of 3325 patients with sudden sensorineural hearing loss were identified and 9975 controls were randomly selected. A conditional logistic regression was used to calculate the odds ratio for having been previously diagnosed with chronic rhinosinusitis, for cases and controls. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: The adjusted odds ratio of having prior chronic rhinosinusitis among cases compared to controls was 1.36 (95 per cent confidence interval = 1.16-1.60). The significant relationship between sudden sensorineural hearing loss and chronic rhinosinusitis was most pronounced among those patients aged 44 years or less (compared to controls) (odds ratio = 2.18; 95 per cent confidence interval = 1.63-2.92). However, the significant relationship between sudden sensorineural hearing loss and prior chronic rhinosinusitis was not sustained for patients older than 60 years compared to controls.

Androgen deprivation therapy did not increase the risk of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease in patients with prostate cancer.

Androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) has been the standard treatment for advanced prostate cancer for many decades. Although potential adverse effects of ADT have been reported, there are no empirical studies investigating the association between ADT and Alzheimer's disease. Therefore, this retrospective cohort study explored the relationship between the use of ADT and the subsequent risk of Alzheimer's disease in men with prostate cancer using a population-based database. We retrieved data from the "Taiwan Longitudinal Health Insurance Database 2000." The study included 1335 patients with prostate cancer and 4005 age-matched comparison patients without prostate malignancy. We then individually tracked each patient (n = 5340) for a 5-year period to discriminate those who subsequently received a diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease. The Cox proportional hazard regression showed that the hazard ratio (HR) for Alzheimer's disease during the 5-year follow-up period for prostate cancer patients was 1.71 (95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.90~3.25) over that of comparison patients. We further analyzed the hazard ratio for Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease between prostate cancer patients who did and those who did not receive ADT, but we failed to observe a significant difference in the hazard ratio for both diseases during the 5-year follow-up period (adjusted HR = 1.76, 95% CI = 0.55~5.62, and HR = 1.13, 95% CI = 0.58~2.20, respectively). In conclusion, this study demonstrated that the use of androgen deprivation therapy in patients with prostate cancer was not associated with a higher risk of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease during the follow-up period.

No increased risk of coronary heart disease for patients receiving androgen deprivation therapy for prostate cancer in Chinese/Taiwanese men.

The relationship between androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) and coronary heart disease (CHD) remains controversial. Furthermore, the majority of such studies focused on Caucasian populations, and there is still a paucity of studies among Asian populations. This population-based study aimed to investigate the relationship between ADT and CHD in an ethnic Chinese (i.e., Taiwanese) population. We used data sourced from the Taiwan 'Longitudinal Health Insurance Database'. This study included 1278 patients with prostate cancer in the study group and 1278 subjects without prostate cancer in the comparison group. Each patient was individually tracked for a 3-year period to identify those who had subsequently received a diagnosis of CHD. The results showed that the incidence rate of CHD during the 3-year follow-up period was 4.69 (95% CI: 2.99-5.48) per 100 person-years and 2.67 (95% CI: 2.15-3.27) per 100 person-years for the study and comparison cohort, respectively. The Cox proportional hazard regression showed that the hazard ratio for CHD during the 3-year follow-up period for prostate cancer patients was 1.65 (95% confidence interval (CI) = 1.25-2.16) compared with comparison subjects after adjusting for patients' geographic location, monthly income, urbanization level, hypertension, diabetes, hyperlipidemia, and stroke. However, we failed to find a significant difference in the adjusted hazard of CHD during the 3-year follow-up period between prostate cancer patients who did and those who did not receive ADT (hazard ratio = 1.12, 95% CI = 0.79-1.59). We concluded that prostate cancer but not ADT was significantly associated with CHD. In addition, a common cause of prostate cancer and coronary heart disease could exist.

Rock-shells (Thais clavigera) as an indicator of As, Cu, and Zn contamination on the Putai Coast of the black-foot disease area in Taiwan.

This study presents the distribution of arsenic (As), copper (Cu), and zinc (Zn) in various seafoods-oysters (Crassostrea gigas), false fusus (Hemifuscus tuba), venus clams (Cyclina sineasis), green mussels (Perna viridis), blood clams (Arca granosa), flounders (Psettodes erumei), and rock-shells (Thais clavigera) collected from the Putai coast of the black-foot disease (BFD) area in Taiwan. Special attention is paid to evaluate the relationships among As, Cu, and Zn and effect of body size on metal concentration in Thais clavigera. Maximum Zn and Cu geometric mean (GM) concentrations (GM = 615 and 376 microg/g, dry wt, respectively) are found in oysters (Crassostrea gigas), and the values are much higher than those of the other organisms by about 1.7-208 and 1.8-375 times, respectively. Similarly, Thais clavigera has a high capacity for accumulating Cu and Zn collected from the same location. One interesting point is that relatively high As concentrations (GM = 65.7 microg/g, dry wt) in Thais clavigera are found as compared with those in other organisms (range from GM = 2.37 to 40.2 microg/g, dry wt). The As concentrations are significantly higher in Thais clavigera (1.62-27.7 times) than those in other organisms (p < 0.05), except for the false fusus (Hamifuscus tuba). A linear regression analysis shows a significant increase in Zn concentration with increasing Cu concentration in Thais clavigera. On the other hand, the As concentration is correlated with Cu and Zn concentrations (r = 0.77 and 0.77, respectively; p < 0.05) in Thais clavigera. Double logarithmic plots of metal content and concentration against dry-body weight and shell length show linear relationships. The result indicates that large individuals have higher contents of Cu, Zn and As, and have slopes of 1.58, 1.38, and 1.34, respectively. In addition, metal concentrations against shell length for all animal sizes also indicate that Cu, Zn and As have slopes of 1.92, 1.18, and 1.11, respectively. In conclusion, Thais clavigera has a high capactiy for accumulating As, Cu, and Zn and is a potential bioindicator for monitoring As, Cu and Zn.