Abstract
Background: Patients with traumatic brain injury (TBI) face increased risk of stroke. Whether acupuncture can help to protect TBI patients from stroke has not previously been studied. Methods: Taiwan's National Health Insurance Research Database was used to conduct a retrospective cohort study of 7409 TBI patients receiving acupuncture treatment and 29,636 propensity-score-matched TBI patients without acupuncture treatment in 2000-2008 as controls. Both TBI cohorts were followed until the end of 2010 and adjusted for immortal time to measure the incidence and adjusted hazard ratios (HRs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) of new-onset stroke in the multivariable Cox proportional hazard models. Results: TBI patients with acupuncture treatment (4.9 per 1000 person-years) had a lower incidence of stroke compared with those without acupuncture treatment (7.5 per 1000 person-years), with a HR of 0.59 (95% CI = 0.50-0.69) after adjustment for sociodemographics, coexisting medical conditions and medications. The association between acupuncture treatment and stroke risk was investigated by sex and age group (20-44, 45-64, and ≥65 years). The probability curve with log-rank test showed that TBI patients receiving acupuncture treatment had a lower probability of stroke than those without acupuncture treatment during the follow-up period (p
Original language | English |
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Article number | e89208 |
Journal | PLoS One |
Volume | 9 |
Issue number | 2 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Feb 19 2014 |
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Agricultural and Biological Sciences(all)
- Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology(all)
- Medicine(all)