Schizophrenia is closely associated with cardiovascular risk factors which are consequently attributable to the development of chronic kidney disease and end-stage renal disease (ESRD). However, no study has been conducted to examine ESRD-related epidemiology and quality of care before starting dialysis for patients with schizophrenia. By using nationwide health insurance databases, we identifi...

BACKGROUND We investigated whether children and adolescents who survive cancer are at increased risk for psychiatric hospitalization. METHODS In a nationwide, population-based, retrospective cohort study, 3710 persons who survived at least three years after a diagnosis of cancer in childhood or adolescence in the period from 1943 to 1990, and who were alive on January 1, 1970, or were born af...

Schizophrenia is a debilitating chronic disease that requires lifelong medical care and supervision. Even with treatment, the majority of patients relapse within 5 years, and suicide may occur in up to 10% of patients. Poor adherence to oral antipsychotics is the most common cause of relapse. The discontinuation rate for oral antipsychotics in schizophrenia ranges from 26% to 44%, and as many a...

BACKGROUND It remains unknown as to whether the antipsychotic dose needed for the acute-phase treatment of schizophrenia is also necessary for relapse prevention. AIM To compare the efficacy between standard dose [(World Health Organization daily defined dose (DDD)] vs low dose (≥50% to <1 DDD) or very low dose (<50% DDD) for relapse prevention in schizophrenia. DATA SOURCE Double-blind, ra...

the activity of angiotension converting enzyme (ace; omim: 106180) in different brain regions of patients with schizophrenia changed, suggesting a possible involvement of ace in psychiatric disorders. genetic polymorphism of insertion/deletion (i/d; dbsnp rs4646994) in the gene encoding ace has been well defined.the present case-control study was performed on 363 (268 males, 95 females) in-pati...

We consider the task of predicting which patients are most at risk for post-hospitalization venothromboembolism (VTE) using information automatically elicited from an EHR. Given a set of cases and controls, we use machine-learning methods to induce models for making these predictions. Our empirical evaluation of this approach offers a number of interesting and important conclusions. We identify...

BACKGROUND Studies in chronic noncancer pain settings have found that opioid use increases health care utilization. Despite the key role of analgesics, specifically opioids, in the setting of cancer pain, there is no literature to our knowledge about the relationship between adherence to prescribed around-the-clock (ATC) analgesics and acute health care utilization (hospitalization) among patie...

BACKGROUND Numerous epidemiological studies found an increased risk of schizophrenia among persons exposed to various obstetric complications. The underlying mechanisms are unknown. OBJECTIVE To study specific risk factors, as well as sets of risk factors, representing 3 different etiologic mechanisms: (1) malnutrition during fetal life; (2) extreme prematurity; and (3) hypoxia or ischemia. ...