Higher incidence of hip fracture in newly diagnosed schizophrenic patients in Taiwan

Abstract

Hip fracture is a major public health concern due to its poor outcome and serious socioeconomic burden in older people. Evidence has shown that many factors are related to increased risk of hip fracture, but psychiatric diseases are not confirmatory. A case-control study by Howard et al. in the United Kingdom has shown that schizophrenia is associated with increased risk of hip fracture in univariate analysis (odds ratio [OR]=1.73, 95% CI=1.32-2.28), but association is no longer found in multivariate analysis. To date, no clinical study has focused on the relationship between schizophrenia and the risk of hip fracture in older people in Taiwan. In order to clarify this issue, we used the database from the Taiwan National Health Insurance program to conduct this populationbased cohort study. The details of the insurance program can be found in previous studies. Keywords: Older people; schizophrenia; hip fracture (Published: 17 April 2013) Citation: Libyan J Med 2013, 8 : 20911 - http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/ljm.v8i0.20911