The Presence of Diabetes Mellitus or Pre-diabetes Mellitus Increases Mortality from Heart Disease in a Taiwanese Population: A 10-year Follow-Up Study.

BACKGROUND: We evaluated hyperglycemia-associated mortality in the Taiwanese population by conducting a 10-year retrospective cohort study. METHODS: From 2007 to 2017, all participants, regardless of their age or underlying diseases, were identified at a Health Screening Center in Taiwan. Overall, 114,534 participants were included in the analysis. They were classified into three subgroups according to glycemia and smoking status by combining survival for data analysis. RESULTS: The mean follow-up time, age, and body mass index (BMI) were 8.14 ± 2.22 years, 40.95 ± 12.14 years, and 23.24 ± 3.65 kg/m2, respectively. The cumulative death rate increased from 0.9% in the normal fasting blood glucose(FBG) subgroup to approximately 6% in the diabetes FBG subgroup. After adjusting for age, gender, BMI, high-density lipoprotein, triglycerides, waist circumference(WC), and smoking status, the hazard ratio (HR) for all-cause, cancer, and heart disease mortality in the diabetes mellitus(DM) subgroup was 1.560, 1.381, and 1.828, respectively.HR was 0.989 in all-cause, 0.940 in cancer, and 1.326 in heart disease in the pre-DM subgroup. CONCLUSION: Being tested for pre-DM is related to a higher risk of death from heart disease in the Taiwanese population at baseline. Therefore, cardiovascular risk must be actively measured among diabetes patients every visit.

Survival of Lung Cancer Patients by Histopathology in Taiwan from 2010 to 2016: A Nationwide Study.

OBJECTIVE: Lung cancer poses a tremendous threat to the modern world. According to Taiwan's Ministry of Health and Welfare, lung cancer took first place in total cancer deaths in 2021. This study investigated the overall lung cancer survival based on histopathology between 2010 and 2016 in Taiwan. METHOD: Data from 2010 to 2016 was collected from the Taiwan Cancer Registry (TCR). The characteristics and overall survival of 71,334 lung cancer patients were analyzed according to the tumor, node, metastasis (TNM) 7th staging system. Univariate and multivariate analyses were performed to identify differences in 1-year, 3-year, and 5-year survival between different histopathologies of lung cancer. RESULTS: The 1-year overall survival rate increased from 54.07% in 2010 to 66.14% in 2016. The 3-year overall survival rate increased from 26.57% in 2010 to 41.12% in 2016 in all patients. Among the histopathologies of lung cancer, 3-year overall survival of adenocarcinoma patients increased the most and largely contributed to the increased 3-year overall survival of all lung cancer patients. CONCLUSIONS: The introduction of target therapy has led to a tremendous increase in overall survival for lung adenocarcinoma patients. However, target therapy differs by histopathology. Choosing the right target therapy and determining the correct histopathology of lung cancer is a pivotal key in increasing the overall survival of patients. Together with immune therapy, the landscape of lung cancer treatments is changing.