Coronary heart disease (CHD) is the leading cause of mortality in the United States. The present cohort study was conducted to determine whether rate of FEV1 loss independently predicts CHD mortality in apparently healthy men. White male Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging (BLSA) participants without CHD underwent clinical evaluation at 2-yr intervals; 883 had satisfactory pulmonary and lipid studies and returned for a least one visit. Cases were BLSA subjects without CHD on entry who died a "coronary death" (death from acute myocardial infarction, sudden death, or congestive heart failure in the presence of coronary artery disease). Forced expiratory maneuvers followed American Thoracic Society guidelines. Serum cholesterol, blood pressure, cigarette smoking, and body mass index were obtained from the BLSA database. There were 79 CHD deaths and 804 survivors during an average follow-up of 17.4 yr. After adjustment for age, initial FEV1% predicted, smoking status, hypertension, and cholesterol, a time-dependent proportional hazards model showed that cardiac mortality, but not all causes of mortality, generally increased with increasing quintile of FEV1 decline for the entire cohort (relative risk [RR] 2.92-5.13) and separately for the subset of never-smokers. Thus, excess CHD mortality follows a large decline in FEV1, independent of the initial FEV1% predicted, cigarette smoking, and other common CHD risk factors.

Evidence is limited regarding the effect of diagnosis-to-treatment interval (DTI) on the survival of colorectal cancer (CRC) patients. In addition, previous studies on treatment delay and CRC survival have largely grouped patients from all stages (I-IV) into one cohort. Our study provides analysis on each stage individually. We conducted a retrospective cohort study with 39,000 newly diagnosed CRC patients obtained from the Taiwan Cancer Registry Database from 2004–2010 to examine the effect of DTIs on overall survival. DTIs were divided into 3 groups: ≤ 30 days (36,115 patients, 90.5% of study patients), 31–150 days (2,533, 6.4%), and ≥ 151 days (1,252, 3.15%). Risk of death was increased for DTI 31–150 days (hazard ratio 1.51; 95% confidence interval 1.43–1.59) and DTI ≥ 151 days (1.64; 1.54–1.76) compared to DTI ≤ 30. This risk was consistent across all cancer stages. Additional factors that increased risk of death include male gender, age >75, Charlson Comorbidity Index ≥7, other catastrophic illnesses, lack of multidisciplinary team involvement, and treatment in a low volume center. From these results, we advise that the DTI for all CRC patients, regardless of cancer staging, should be 30 days or less.

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Objective: To investigate the risk of developing OA in patients diagnosed with RA. Methods: In this study, we presented gender, age, urbanization, occupation and, comorbidities in a RA cohort and a non-RA cohort based on number and percentage. We investigated the OA risk in patients with RA. We conducted a retrospective cohort study with a 13-year longitudinal follow-up in Taiwan. Patients who received RA diagnoses between 2000 and 2012 were enrolled in the study cohort. The non-RA cohort were 1:1 propensity score matched with the RA cohort by age, gender, index year, urbanization, occupation, and comorbidities. The hazard ratios (HRs) and adjusted HRs (aHRs) were estimated after confounders were adjusted. Sensitivity analysis utilizing the Longitudinal Health Insurance Database (LHID) was conducted. Results: We totally enrolled 63,626 cases in RA patients (study cohort) and matched controls. In the RA cohort, the crude HR for OA was 2.86 (95% confidence interval (CI), 2.63-3.11, p < 0.001), and the aHR was 2.75 (95% CI, 2.52-2.99, p < 0.001). (The study demonstrated that patients with RA had a higher risk for developing OA compared with the non-RA controls. Conclusion: Developing effective OA prevention strategies are necessary in patients with RA. This finding may be extended to evaluate the risk of OA among other kinds of inflammatory autoimmune diseases. Identifying the key pathogenesis mechanisms are necessary in the future study.