Dipeptidyl peptidase-4 inhibitors and the risk of community-acquired pneumonia in patients with type 2 diabetes.

AIMS: To determine whether the use of dipeptidyl peptidase-4 (DPP-4) inhibitors is associated with an increased risk of community-acquired pneumonia. METHODS: The UK Clinical Practice Research Datalink and the Hospital Episodes Statistics database were used to conduct a nested case-control analysis within a cohort of new users of antidiabetic drugs between 2007 and 2012. Incident cases of hospitalization for community-acquired pneumonia were matched with up to 20 controls on age, duration of treated diabetes, calendar year and duration of follow-up. Conditional logistic regression models were used to estimate the odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for hospitalization for community-acquired pneumonia associated with current use of DPP-4 inhibitors compared with current use of two or more oral antidiabetic drugs. RESULTS: The cohort included 49,653 patients, of whom 562 were hospitalized for community-acquired pneumonia during follow-up (incidence rate 5.2/1000 person-years). Compared with current use of two or more oral antidiabetic drugs, current use of DPP-4 inhibitors was not associated with an increased risk of hospitalized community-acquired pneumonia overall (adjusted OR 0.80, 95% CI 0.50-1.29) or according to duration of use (p for trend = 0.57). CONCLUSIONS: The use of DPP-4 inhibitors was not associated with an increased risk of hospitalization for community-acquired pneumonia. Additional research is needed to assess the association between these drugs and other serious infections.

Management and outcomes of acute appendicitis in pregnancy-population-based study of over 7000 cases.

OBJECTIVE: To compare outcomes and management practices among pregnant and nonpregnant women with acute appendicitis. DESIGN: Population-based matched cohort study. SETTING: United States of America. SAMPLE: A total of 7114 women with appendicitis among 7,037,386 births. METHODS: Logistic regression analyses to calculate the odds ratio (OR) and corresponding 95% confidence intervals (95% CIs) for variables and outcomes of interest. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Maternal morbidities associated with appendicitis; management practices for pregnant and age-matched nonpregnant women with appendicitis. RESULTS: There was an overall incidence of 101.1 cases of appendicitis per 100,000 births. Appendicitis was diagnosed in 35,570 nonpregnant women during the corresponding time frame. Peritonitis occurred in 20.3% of pregnant women with appendicitis, with an adjusted OR of 1.3 (95% CI 1.2-1.4) when compared with nonpregnant women with appendicitis. In pregnancy, there was an almost two-fold increase in sepsis and septic shock, transfusion, pneumonia, bowel obstruction, postoperative infection and length of stay >3 days. Whereas 5.8% of appendicitis cases among pregnant women were managed conservatively, they were associated with a considerably increased risk of shock, peritonitis and venous thromboembolism as compared to surgically managed cases. CONCLUSIONS: Compared with nonpregnant women, pregnant women with acute appendicitis have higher rates of adverse outcomes. Conservative management should be avoided given the serious risk of adverse outcomes in pregnancy.

Short communication: Setup variations in locoregional radiotherapy for breast cancer: an electronic portal imaging study.

Recent trials demonstrating a survival benefit with locoregional radiotherapy (LRRT) to the chest wall and regional nodes in women with node-positive breast cancer have led to increased use of complex techniques to match three or more radiation fields, but information on setup reproducibility with LRRT for breast cancer is scarce. This study reports the magnitude and directions of random and systematic deviations in LRRT for breast cancer using an offline electronic portal imaging verification protocol. Electronic portal images (EPIs) of 46 consecutive women treated with LRRT for breast cancer from March 2001 to February 2002 with LRRT were analysed. Comparisons of EPIs to the corresponding digitally reconstructed radiographs were performed offline with anatomy matching. Displacements in mm were recorded in the superior-inferior (SI), medial-lateral (ML), and anterior-posterior (AP) directions. Random errors ranged from 2.0 mm to 2.5 mm for the breast/chest wall tangential treatments and 2.3 mm to 3.9 mm for the supraclavicular nodal treatments. Systematic errors occurred to a greater degree in the AP direction for the tangential fields and in the ML direction for the supraclavicular field. Displacements of > or =10 mm were found in 1.2% of breast/chest wall tangential treatments and in 6.2% of supraclavicular nodal treatments. These data demonstrate that EPI is a useful tool to verify setup reproducibility in LRRT for breast cancer.