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There are conflicting reports on cancer risk associated with angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors/angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs). This retrospective cohort study was conducted to analyze the risk of cancer development in patients who received ACE inhibitors/ARBs as treatment for essential hypertension. Using the Taiwan National Health Insurance Research Database, 297,688 eligible study patients with essential hypertension were identified. According to their antihypertensive prescriptions, the study patients were stratified into an ACE inhibitor group, an ARB group, or a control group. After matching, participants were observed for the occurrence of cancer. In the ACE inhibitor group compared with the control group, the hazard ratio was 0.51 (95% confidence interval, 0.39-0.68). In the ARB group compared with the control group, the hazard ratio was 0.8 (95% confidence interval, 0.65-0.97). Regular use of ACE inhibitors/ARBs was not associated with an increased risk of cancer development and was actually found to decrease overall cancer risk in this study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are conflicting reports on cancer risk associated with angiotensin-converting enzyme ( ACE) inhibitors/angiotensin receptor blockers ( ARBs). This retrospective cohort study was conducted to analyze the risk of cancer development in patients who received ACE inhibitors/ ARBs as treatment for essential hypertension. Using the Taiwan National Health Insurance Research Database, 297,688 eligible study patients with essential hypertension were identified. According to their antihypertensive prescriptions, the study patients were stratified into an ACE inhibitor group, an ARB group, or a control group. After matching, participants were observed for the occurrence of cancer. In the ACE inhibitor group compared with the control group, the hazard ratio was 0.51 (95% confidence interval, 0.39-0.68). In the ARB group compared with the control group, the hazard ratio was 0.8 (95% confidence interval, 0.65-0.97). Regular use of ACE inhibitors/ ARBs was not associated with an increased risk of cancer development and was actually found to decrease overall cancer risk in this study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a common neurodevelopmental disorder. Recently, children using antibiotics showed an increased incidence of neurodevelopmental disorders. The purpose of this study was to investigate the association between antibiotics use and the risk of ADHD in children. Population-based retrospective cohort study. The Taiwan National Health Insurance Research Database was used to collect data of children. Prevalence of antibiotics use was analyzed in the children (age, <2 years) included in this study. There were 1,601,689 children included in this study between 2004 and 2012. The risk of developing ADHD was estimated using the Cox proportional hazards model. 71.25 % of children used at least one antibiotic, and the mean follow-up period was 7.07 years. After controlling for other related influencing factors, children who used antibiotics had a 1.12 times higher risk of ADHD than those who did not. The risk of ADHD increased through the use of penicillin and cephalosporin regardless of the duration of antibiotics use. Antibiotics use in children—especially penicillin and cephalosporin—was associated with a higher risk of ADHD. • Providing real-world evidence of the association between antibiotics use and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children in Taiwan. • 71.25% of children in Taiwan used at least one antibiotic before 2 years old between 2004 and 2012. • Children using antibiotics had a higher risk of incident ADHD. • Penicillins and cephalosporins were associated with a higher risk of ADHD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: How a person's Parkinson disease (PD) risk is affected by dipeptidyl peptidase-4 (DPP-4) inhibitors remains unclear. We evaluated the association of PD risk with use of these inhibitors in individuals diagnosed as having diabetes mellitus (DM)., Methods: Individuals diagnosed as having new-onset DM were enrolled into the case group and comparison group, comprising patients who received a DPP-4 inhibitor and a sulfonylurea, respectively. These groups were matched through propensity score matching on the basis of income level, gender, urbanization level, enrollment year, age, and diabetes complications severity index score. The case group was divided into subgroups on the basis of whether they had a cumulative defined daily dose (cDDD) of <75, 75-150, or >150. The DPP-4 inhibitor-PD risk association was evaluated through a Cox proportional hazards model. The Bonferroni adjustment test was employed to adjust P -values and reduce the false positive rate., Results: Compared with those in the comparison group (treatment with a sulfonylurea), patients with a DPP-4 inhibitor cDDD of >150 had a hazard ratio (HR) of 1.30 for PD development (95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.97-1.73; adjusted P = .263); the HRs for patients with a cDDD of <75 or 75-150 were 0.95 (95% CI: 0.71-1.27; adjusted P = .886) and 1.06 (95% CI: 0.75-1.50; adjusted P = .886), respectively. We noted nonsignificant differences regarding the associations between the use of the various DPP-4 inhibitors (linagliptin, saxagliptin, sitagliptin, and vildagliptin) and PD risk after adjustment for any individual inhibitor (adjusted P > .05)., Conclusions: DPP-4 inhibitors were discovered in this study to not be associated with increased PD risk. This result was confirmed when the analysis was conducted individually for the 4 investigated DPP-4 inhibitors (sitagliptin, saxagliptin, linagliptin, and vildagliptin).

Pregnant women are at increased risk of influenza-related complications. However, the rate of influenza vaccination among pregnant women in Taiwan is low. By analyzing real-world data in this study, we investigated the factors associated with influenza vaccination during pregnancy in Taiwan. This study was a cross-sectional study. We collected real-world data from 2 databases in Taiwan: the Birth Certificate Database and the National Health Insurance Research Database. The study population was pregnant between October 2014 and December 2016 in Taiwan. The multivariate logistic regression was performed to identify factors associated with influenza vaccination, including maternal sociodemographics, trimester, comorbidities, and health-care utilization. The vaccination rate of among pregnant women was 8.2%. Factors significantly associated with a high likelihood of influenza vaccination were age between 30 and 34 years (odds ratio [OR]: 1.14; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.10-1.19), second trimester (OR: 1.80; 95% CI: 1.75-1.85), income equal to or exceeding NT$ 38 201 (OR: 1.92; 95% CI: 1.86-1.99), hypertension (OR: 1.16; 95% CI: 1.05-1.29), cardiovascular disease (OR: 1.29; 95% CI: 1.17-1.42), autoimmune disease (OR: 1.47; 95% CI: 1.38-1.58), and chronic pulmonary disease (OR: 1.24; 95% CI: 1.18-1.31). A low level of urbanization, at least 1 hospitalization in the previous year, and the presence of pregnancy complications (eg, gestational diabetes, preeclampsia, and placenta previa) were associated with a lower likelihood rate of influenza vaccination. The influenza vaccination rate among pregnant women in Taiwan was low. Age, gestational age, income level, urbanization level, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, autoimmune disease, chronic pulmonary disease, and pregnancy complications may be associated with influenza vaccination among pregnant women., Competing Interests: Declaration of Conflicting InterestsThe author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

There are no data on the incidence of new-onset diabetes mellitus (NODM ) in nondiabetic dyslipidaemia patients treated with fibrates. The aim of our study was to clarify these issues, to investigate the relationship between NODM and fibrate and whether the fibrates lead to increased risk for developing NODM. A retrospective cohort study was conducted by analyzing the Longitudinal Health Insurance Database (LHID 2005) of the National Health Insurance Research Database (NHIRD) from 2005 to 2010 to investigate all fibrate prescriptions for patients with dyslipidaemia. We estimated the hazard ratios (HRs) of NODM associated with fibrate use. We identified 145 NODM patients among 3,815 dyslipidaemic patients in the database for the study period. The risk estimates for NODM for users of fenofibrate (HR 1.30; 95% CI 0.82, 2.05) and gemfibrozil (HR 0.771; 95% CI 0.49, 1.22) were not associated with an increased risk of developing NODM (P > 0.05). Our results revealed that patients with dyslipidaemia who took fenofibrate and gemfibrozil had a neutral risk of NODM. The reasons may be associated with the fibrates have the properties that activate PPARα and in some cases also activated PPARγ, leading to showing a neutral risk of NODM.