In order to determine whether Taiwanese vegetarian diets reduce the risks of depression, we analyzed data from the Tzu Chi Vegetarian Study (TCVS), which is a prospective cohort study following 12,062 participants from the Buddhist Tzu Chi Foundation of Taiwan since 2005. The cohort was prospectively followed by linking to the National Health Institute Research Database (NHIRD) of Taiwan and hazard ratios of depression between vegetarian and non-vegetarian groups were calculated by Cox proportional hazards regression. We assessed dietary intake using a detailed food frequency questionnaire (FFQ). Incident depression was ascertained through linkage to NHIRD which had claim records with the International Classification of Diseases, and a total of 3,571 vegetarians and 7,006 non-vegetarians were included in this analysis. Compared with non-vegetarians, the vegetarian group had a lower incidence of depressive disorders (2.37 vs. 3.21 per 10,000 person-years; adjusted hazard ratio (aHR): 0.70; 95% confidence interval (95% CI): 0.52–0.93). Thus, Taiwanese vegetarians had a lower risk of developing subsequent depressive disorders compared with non-vegetarians. This indicated that diet may be an important measure for the prevention of depression. However, to generalize to the global population requires further study.

Delivery records of public hospitals and birth certificates of household registration offices were examined to study the epidemiological characteristics of twinning rate from 1955 to 1984 in Taiwan. The MZ twinning rate was consistently higer than the DZ rate during the study period. The DZ rate declined steadily from 2.7 per 1000 in 1955 to 1.3 per 1000 in 1975, and then gradually increased to 3.6 per 1000 in 1984. The MZ rate peaked periodically in 1956, 1966 and 1976, and gradually increased from 3.3 per 1000 in 1978 to 5.9 per 1000 in 1986. Both MZ and DZ rates were higher in urban than in rural areas and they were also higher in northern Taiwan than elsewhere in the island. While both MZ and DZ rates increased with maternal age and parity, the maternal age difference and the parity difference were more striking in DZ than in MZ rates. The international comparison also showed a greater racial difference in maternal age-specific DZ than MZ twinning rates; and the older the maternal age, the greater the international discrepancy in DZ rates.

No abstract

Bipolar disorder (BD) is highly heritable and well known for its recurrent manic and depressive episodes. The present study focused on manic episode in BD patients and aimed to investigate state-specific transcriptome alterations between acute episode and remission, including messenger RNAs (mRNAs), long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs), and micro-RNAs (miRNAs), using microarray and RNA sequencing (RNA-Seq) platforms. BD patients were enrolled with clinical information, and peripheral blood samples collected at both acute and remission status spanning for at least 2 months were confirmed by follow-ups. Symptom severity was assessed by Young Mania Rating Scale. We enrolled six BD patients as the discovery samples and used the Affymetrix Human Transcriptome Array 2.0 to capture transcriptome data at the two time points. For replication, expression data from Gene Expression Omnibus that consisted of 11 BD patients were downloaded, and we performed a mega-analysis for microarray data of 17 patients. Moreover, we conducted RNA sequencing (RNA-Seq) in additional samples of 7 BD patients. To identify intraindividual differentially expressed genes (DEGs), we analyzed data using a linear model controlling for symptom severity. We found that noncoding genes were of majority among the top DEGs in microarray data. The expression fold change of coding genes among DEGs showed moderate to high correlations (∼0.5) across platforms. A number of lncRNAs and two miRNAs ( MIR181B1 and MIR103A1 ) exhibited high levels of gene expression in the manic state. For coding genes, we reported that the taste function-related genes, including TAS2R5 and TAS2R3 , may be mania state-specific markers. Additionally, four genes showed a nominal p -value of less than 0.05 in all our microarray data, mega-analysis, and RNA-Seq analysis. They were upregulated in the manic state and consisted of MS4A14 , PYHIN1 , UTRN , and DMXL2 , and their gene expression patterns were further validated by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) (qRT-PCR). We also performed weight gene coexpression network analysis to identify gene modules for manic episode. Genes in the mania-related modules were different from the susceptible loci of BD obtained from genome-wide association studies, and biological pathways in relation to these modules were mainly related to immune function, especially cytokine–cytokine receptor interaction. Results of the present study elucidated potential molecular targets and genomic networks that are involved in manic episode. Future studies are needed to further validate these biomarkers for their roles in the etiology of bipolar illness.

The purpose of this study was to explore the menopause experiences of Chinese women in Taiwan. Six hundred and seventy-three women, aged 40 to 60 years, in the Taipei metropolitan area were chosen as the sample. These women were categorized into four groups in terms of their menopausal experiences: surgical menopause, natural menopause, perimenopause, and premenopause. The results show that the three most frequently reported discomforts that women experienced during menopause were backache/lumbago, amentia, and tiredness. The frequency of reported discomforts was low compared with frequencies reported in Western countries. The surgical group reported higher rates of symptoms than others. In addition, the hormone use rate was 13.5% for the natural menopause group, 34.4% for the surgical menopause group, 12% for the perimenopause group, and 1.9% for the premenopausal group. Higher hormone use rates were inconsistent with the general negative attitudes toward hormone use in Chinese society. Among those 59 women ever using hormones, only one third reported improvement in their symptoms. Women in Taiwan have an inadequate knowledge of menopause. Further health care education and research are needed.