PLoS ONE (Jan 2024)

The role of traditional Chinese medicine on fracture surgery, hospitalization, and total mortality risks in diabetic patients with osteoporosis.

  • Yi-Chen Liu,
  • Chi-Hsiang Chung,
  • Chien-Jung Lin,
  • Sheng-Chiang Su,
  • Feng-Chih Kuo,
  • Jhih-Syuan Liu,
  • Peng-Fei Li,
  • Chia-Luen Huang,
  • Li-Ju Ho,
  • Chun-Yung Chang,
  • Ming-Shiun Lin,
  • Chih-Ping Lin,
  • An-Che Cheng,
  • Chien-Hsing Lee,
  • Chang-Hsun Hsieh,
  • Yi-Jen Hung,
  • Hsin-Ya Liu,
  • Chieh-Hua Lu,
  • Wu-Chien Chien

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0289455
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 19, no. 5
p. e0289455

Abstract

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BackgroundStudies have confirmed that osteoporosis has been considered as one of the complications of diabetes, and the health hazards to patients are more obvious. This study is mainly based on the Taiwan National Health Insurance Database (TNHID). Through the analysis of TNHID, it is shown that the combined treatment of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) medicine in patients of diabetes with osteoporosis (T2DOP) with lower related risks.MethodsAccording to the study design, 3131 patients selected from TNHID who received TCM treatment were matched by 1-fold propensity score according to gender, age, and inclusion date as the control group. Cox proportional hazards analyzes were performed to compare fracture surgery, hospitalization, and all-cause mortality during a mean follow-up from 2000 to 2015.ResultsA total of 1055/1469/715 subjects (16.85%/23.46%/11.42%) had fracture surgery/inpatient/all-cause mortality of which 433/624/318 (13.83%/19.93%/10.16%) were in the TCM group) and 622/845/397 (19.87%/26.99%/12.68%) in the control group. Cox proportional hazards regression analysis showed that subjects in the TCM group had lower rates of fracture surgery, inpatient and all-cause mortality (adjusted HR = 0.467; 95% CI = 0.225-0.680, PConclusionThis study provides longitudinal evidence through a cohort study of the value of integrated TCM for T2DOP. More research is needed to fully understand the clinical significance of these results.