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Background & Aims: We investigated whether a diagnosis of colonic diverticular disease is associated with an increased risk for subsequent development of colorectal cancer (CRC) in a nationwide population-based retrospective study., Methods: We identified 41,359 individuals diagnosed with colonic diverticular disease as inpatients from 2000 through 2009 from the Taiwan National Health Insurance Research Database (study cohort) and collected data for 165,436 randomly selected additional subjects, matched by sex, age, and baseline year (comparison cohort). Data were collected until individuals developed CRC or withdrew from the National Health Insurance system, or until December 31, 2010. Cumulative incidences and hazard ratios (HRs) of CRC development were determined. To assess for ascertainment bias, we conducted an analysis excluding the first 12 months of follow-up evaluation., Results: The risk of CRC was significantly higher in the study cohort than in the comparison cohort (HR adjusted for age, sex, and comorbidities, 4.54; 95% confidence interval, 4.19-4.91; P < .0001). In a sensitivity analysis, we excluded the first 12 months of follow-up evaluation after a diagnosis of colonic diverticular disease; subsequent incidence rates for CRC in the study and comparison cohorts were 15.13 and 15.74 per 10,000 person-years, respectively (adjusted HR, 0.96; 95% confidence interval, 0.83-1.11)., Conclusions: Colonic diverticular disease is not associated with an increased risk of subsequent CRC after the first year of diagnosis of colonic diverticular disease. An increased risk was observed in the first year, possibly owing to misclassification and screening effects., (Copyright © 2014 AGA Institute. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Introduction: Unlike autoimmune hemolytic anemia (AIHA), literature on the etiological study of non-autoimmune hemolytic anemia (non-AIHA) is scarce. The incidence and prevalence of non-AIHA in different geographic regions are largely unknown perhaps owing to the lack of perspective investigation and different profiles of etiologies from different geographic regions. We aimed to examine the real-world etiology or mechanisms of the non-hereditary non-AIHA from a nationwide population-based administrative claim database in Taiwan., Patients and Methods: The National Health Insurance Research Database of Taiwan was adopted for this research. The studied population was total inpatient claim records including both pediatric and adult patients, contributed by a population of 23 million insured individuals in Taiwan. From 2002 to 2008, we retrieved 3,903 patients having no pre-existing malignancy discharged after inpatient management for acquired hemolytic anemia, which was defined as coding in discharge diagnoses containing ICD-9-CM code 283. By contrast, ICD-9-CM code 282 and all of the sub-codes are for hereditary hemolytic anemias., Results: AIHA accounted for 32% of the total cases. Among 2,657 patients with non-AIHA, mechanical or microangiopathic mechanism accounted for 19% of cases; hemolytic-uremic syndrome (HUS) 4%, hemoglobinuria because of hemolysis from external causes such as paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria (PNH) and march hemoglobinuria 7%, and chronic idiopathic hemolytic anemia or other unspecified non-AIHA 69%. We looked further for specific etiology or mechanism for this group of patients with non-hereditary extrinsic non-AIHA (n = 2,657). The explanatory disease states or conditions were splenomegaly; alcohol use disorder (spur cell hemolysis); heart-valve prosthesis; malignant hypertension; disseminated intravascular coagulation; transfusion reaction; dengue fever-induced hemolytic anemia; direct parasitization; snake, lizard, or spider bite; and Wilson's disease with internal toxin mechanism. All these cases can explain up to 34.6% of all the non-hereditary extrinsic non-AIHA cases. Fragmentation hemolysis (HUS, heart-valve prosthesis, malignant hypertension, and disseminated intravascular coagulation) accounted for 7.4% of non-AIHA hospitalized patients with non-neoplastic disease., Conclusions: This article is the first one to clearly demonstrate that the non-neoplastic-induced HUS requiring hospitalization cases in Taiwan, which has a population of over 23 million were 110 over a span of seven years, 16 cases per year. Although the etiologies of non-AIHA are well known and described in the literature, this work added the statistical percentages of the various etiologies of non-AIHA in Taiwan.

Background: To contain cost, Taiwan's previous National Health Insurance Reimbursement Policy requested that physicians discontinue their patients' statin therapy once the serum cholesterol had reached appropriate levels. This allowed us to evaluate the association between statin continuation and the occurrence of atrial fibrillation/flutter and whether it was modified by chronic kidney disease (CKD) status., Methods: Patients who initiated statin therapy between January 1, 2001 and December 31, 2009 were identified from a random sample of one million subjects in the Taiwan National Health Insurance Research Database. The outcome was atrial fibrillation/flutter. A proportional hazard regression model with time-varying statin use was applied to estimate the hazard ratios (HR) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for atrial fibrillation/flutter according to current statin use versus treatment discontinuation, adjusted for baseline disease risk scores and time-varying covariates., Results: A total of 6767 CKD and 63,678 non-CKD patients initiating statin therapy were included and followed for an average of 4.0 years. A total of 1118 participants experienced new-onset atrial fibrillation/flutter. The incidence of atrial fibrillation/flutter was approximately 2 fold higher in the CKD patients. Continuation of statin therapy was associated with a 22% (adjusted hazard ratio 0.78; 95% CI: 0.65-0.93) and 57% (adjusted HR 0.43; 95% CI: 0.27-0.68) decrease in atrial fibrillation/flutter hazard as compared with discontinuation in non-CKD and CKD patients, respectively., Conclusions: Continuation of statin therapy was associated with a decreased risk of atrial fibrillation/flutter among CKD and non-CKD patients. However, further randomized studies are still needed to assess the association., (Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.)