Background: Previous research found that statins, in addition to its efficiency in treating hyperlipidemia, may also incur adverse drug reactions, which mainly include myopathies and abnormalities in liver function. Aim: This study aims to assess the risk for newly onset sarcopenia among patients with chronic kidney disease using statins. Material and Method: In a nationwide retrospective population-based cohort study, 75,637 clinically confirmed cases of chronic kidney disease between 1997 and 2011were selected from the National Health Insurance Research Database of Taiwan. The selection of the chronic kidney disease cohort included a discharge diagnosis with chronic kidney disease or more than 3 outpatient visits with the diagnosis of chronic kidney disease found within 1 year. After consideration of patient exclusions, we finally got a total number of 67,001 cases of chronic kidney disease in the study. The Cox proportional hazards model was used to perform preliminary analysis on the effect of statins usage on the occurrence of newly diagnosed sarcopenia; the Cox proportional hazards model with time-dependent covariates was conducted to take into consideration the individual temporal differences in medication usage, and calculated the hazard ratio (HR) and 95% confidence interval after controlling for gender, age, income, and urbanization. Results: Our main findings indicated that patients with chronic kidney disease who use statins seem to effectively prevent patients from occurrences of sarcopenia, high dosage of statins seem to show more significant protective effects, and the results are similar over long-term follow-up. In addition, the risk for newly diagnosed sarcopenia among patients with lipophilic statins treatment was lower than that among patients with hydrophilic statins treatment. Conclusion: It seems that patients with chronic kidney disease could receive statin treatment to reduce the occurrence of newly diagnosed sarcopenia. Additionally, a higher dosage of statins could reduce the incidence of newly diagnosed sarcopenia in patients with chronic kidney disease.

Harmonization of national consumption data for international comparison is an important but challenging work, yet to date there is a lack of comparable food classification system that incorporates food description in Taiwan. In 2015, European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) released a new standardized food classification and description system called FoodEx2, which provides a flexible combination of classifications and descriptions. Based on FoodEx2 and a unique data set of daily food consumption offered by Taiwan Food Consumption Database, this study aims to provide a harmonized, food description incorporated, food classification system (HFDFC system) that captures all the useful details of food groups in exposure assessments. The HFDFC system was built according to six risk-assessment-related facets including food sources, processed products, cooking methods, manufacturers (brand), food additives and specialty foods. The HFDFC system includes 199 foods in the core list and 131 foods in the extended list. This study also compared the Acrylamide hazard index estimated under the HFDFC system with that under the National Food Consumption Database in Taiwan (NFCDT). The findings indicated that the HFDFC system provides useful and detailed information that helps the users to quickly identify food information in a harmonized manner and to reduce estimation bias. The HFDFC system is expected to facilitate global comparisons in the food risk assessment because it is built based upon EU Foodex2.

Statin therapy can effectively reduce recurrent transient ischemic attack (TIA) risk. However, studies have reported that statin use is associated with incidence of diabetes mellitus (DM). Whether statin therapy remains associated with higher DM risk in patients with TIA remains unknown. This study investigated whether statin treatment influences incident DM risk in patients with TIA. We conducted a retrospective cohort study using the Longitudinal Health Insurance Database 2000. Participants who were newly diagnosed with TIA (ICD-9-CM code 435) from 1 January 1997 to 31 December 2011 were recruited. The Kaplan–Meier method and Cox proportional risk model of time-dependent covariance were used. We enrolled 8342 patients with newly diagnosed TIA from 1 January 1997 to 31 December 2011. Of these, 1255 patients were classified as statin users and 7087 as nonusers. During the 14-year follow-up, the incidence of newly diagnosed DM was 0.545-fold lower in the statins group compared with nonusers (95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.457–0.650). According to cumulative defined daily doses (cDDDs), the adjusted hazard ratios for DM were 0.689, 0.594, and 0.463 when patients were treated with statins at cDDDs = 28–89, 90–180, and >180, respectively. In patients with TIA, statin use is associated with a lower incident DM risk compared with the nonuse of statins.

This study was the first institution-wide health promotion program in Taiwan to apply the five priority areas for taking action in public health highlighted in the Ottawa Charter for diabetes patients. We aimed to improve the quality of home care received by diabetic patients by training health care professionals in health promotion. This program consisted of developing personal skills, reorienting health services, strengthening community actions, creating supportive environments, and building healthy public policy. It was applied in the Yunlin Christian Hospital located in central Taiwan from August 2011 to November 2011. A health-promoting education course consisting of weight control, diabetes care, and quality management for diabetes was developed and applied to all 323 hospital staff. Then, hospital staff volunteers and diabetes patients were recruited to participate in the program. A total of 61 staff volunteers and 90 diabetes patients were involved in this study. Staff volunteers were trained to participate in communities to provide care and guidance to patients with diabetes. The World Health Organization Quality of Life(WHOQOL)-BREF-Taiwan Version questionnaires were investigated before and after implementation of this program for the patients. A health-promoting lifestyle profile questionnaire was filled by the staff. The investigation data were then analyzed by statistical methods. The diabetes patients experienced a significant increase in their satisfaction with health and health-related quality of life as well as significant improvements in health-promotion and self-management behaviors (p < 0.05). In addition, staff volunteers significantly consumes food from the five major groups than the other staff (p < 0.05). Various improvements in health-promoting behaviors were observed amongst the hospital staff and the diabetic patients. Our project could be a reference for other medical organizations to implement an institution-wide health-promotion program for diabetic patients.

Existing food classification and description systems provide users with limited information related to exposure assessment. Our aim in this work is to propose a standardized food description facet called the Taiwan Food Recipe (TFR) system as an emerging tool for food composition, with detailed food ingredient information, including names, proportions, weights of uncooked and cooked foods, etc. The composite foods listed in the Taiwan Nutrition and Health Survey were collected into a list and as consumption data. The TFR system is intended to help analysts reduce potential estimation bias, where, for example, risk assessment results may be overestimated or underestimated due to the complexity of the composition in the composite foods. Based on a Taiwanese food database, we further illustrate and demonstrate how the TFR system can be applied to the assessment of risk of cadmium (Cd) exposure in rice ingredients in the composite food products. In the original system (HFDFC system), the composite food intakes used total weight to estimate the hazard index (HI) of cadmium in the exposure risk assessment, but the percentage of rice was not 100%. The proposed TFR system estimates the percentage of rice and actual intakes in composite foods. Fried rice, sushi, and rice balls in the study were the most common foods containing rice and had higher consumption rates among Taiwan’s rice-based composite foods. The HIs of fried rice, sushi, and rice balls were 0.09, 0.10, and 0.13, respectively, in the HFDFC system. In the TFR system, the HIs of rice in fried rice, sushi, and rice balls were 0.06, 0.04 and 0.05, respectively. The HI of other components in fried rice, sushi, and rice balls were 0.03, 0.06 and 0.08, respectively. More precise HIs were thus shown. The TFR system contributes to global food classification and description systems by providing an appropriate, standardized, and generalized framework for exposure assessments.

Background: Exploring emerging dietary patterns, such as plant-based diets (PBD), often requires considerable effort to rebuild new systems or adapt existing food classification frameworks, presenting a substantial challenge for dietary research. Current systems were not originally designed for this purpose and vary in standardization and interoperability, complicating cross-study comparisons. This study aimed to adopt the harmonized, food description-incorporated, food classification system (HFDFC system) to develop a plant-based diet food classification system (PBDFC system), and to evaluate dietary intake and nutritional status among adults in Taiwan. Methods: A repeated cross-sectional design was applied using 24 h dietary recall data from the Nutrition and Health Survey in Taiwan (2013–2016 and 2017–2020), accessed via the national food consumption database. Adults aged 20–70 years were included. Data were processed through the HFDFC system to generate the PBDFC system. For each participant, the Plant-Based Diet Index (PDI), Body Mass Index (BMI), and Nutrient-Rich Food Index (NRF) were calculated and analyzed by age group. Results: Adults aged 46–70 had significantly higher O-PDI and H-PDI scores, lower Lh-PDI scores (all p < 0.0001), and higher NRF values. Despite higher average BMI, those in the highest H-PDI tertile had significantly lower BMI (p < 0.02). Conclusions: The HFDFC-based PBDFC system offers a flexible, scalable framework for plant-based diet classification and supports future cross-national research.