Kawasaki disease and subsequent risk of allergic diseases

Research article

Kawasaki disease and subsequent risk of allergic diseases: a population-based matched cohort study

Ho-Chang Kuo¹, Wei-Chiao Chang², Kuender D Yang^3,4, Hong-Ren Yu¹, Chih-Lu Wang⁵,Shu-Chen Ho⁶ and Chun-Yuh Yang^6*

• *Corresponding author: Chun-Yuh Yang chunyuh@kmu.edu.tw

Author Affiliations

¹Department of Pediatrics, Kaohsiung Chang Gung Memorial Hospital and Chang Gung University College of Medicine, Kaohsiung, Taiwan

²Department of Clinical Pharmacy; Master Program for Clinical Pharmacogenomics and Pharmacoproteomics, School of Pharmacy, Taipei Medical University, Taipei, Taiwan

³The Department of Medical Research and Development of Pediatrics, Show Chwan Memorial Hospital in Chang Bing, Changhua, Taiwan

⁴Institute of Clinical Medical Sciences, National Yang Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan

⁵Department of Pediatrics, Po-Jen Hospital, Kaohsiung, Taiwan

⁶Department of Public Health, College of Health Sciences, Kaohsiung Medical University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan

For all author emails, please log on.

BMC Pediatrics 2013, 13:38 doi:10.1186/1471-2431-13-38

The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at:http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2431/13/38

Received:	18 October 2012
Accepted:	19 March 2013
Published:	23 March 2013

© 2013 Kuo et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Background

The risk of allergic diseases among Kawasaki disease (KD) patients relative to the general population is not known. The aim of this study was to perform a population-based cohort study to investigate the risk of allergic diseases among children after KD in Taiwan- a country with the third highest incidence of KD in the world.

Methods

Data were obtained from the Taiwan National Health Insurance Research Database. In total, 253 patients who were 5 years of age or younger and had a first-time hospitalization with a diagnosis of KD between 1997 and 2005 were included as the study cohort and 1,012 non-KD patients matched for age and sex were included as comparison cohort. Multivariate Cox proportional hazard regression model was used to adjust for confounding and to compare the 6-year allergic-free survival rate between these two cohorts.

Results

The incidence rate of allergic diseases (184.66 per 1000 person-year) was significantly higher in the KD cohort than in the control cohort (124.99 per 1000 person-years). After adjusting for potential confounders, the adjusted hazard ratios of asthma and allergic rhinitis were 1.51 (95% confidence interval = 1.17-1.95) and 1.30 (95% confidence interval = 1.04-1.62), respectively.

Conclusion

We conclude that KD patients were at an increased risk for allergic diseases compared with the comparison cohort.

Viewing options

• Abstract
• Full text
• View PDF(164KB)