Results
Baseline characteristics
The basic demographic information is summarized in Table 1. The total
cohort was 2485, with 497 individuals in the AH group and 1988 in the
non-AH group. Among them, there were 1186 men and 1299 women. There was
no significant difference in sex (p = 0.976), age (p = 0.991),
residential area (0.944), or socioeconomic status (p = 0.993) between
the two groups. Therefore, we obtained the control group (non-AH)
through appropriate propensity score matching from these statistics.
The HR was investigated for the occurrence of sinusitis during the
follow-up period for 10 years using univariate and multivariate Cox
regression models. Cumulative hazard ratio curve shows that there were
significant differences between AH group and non-AH group. (Figure 1) In
the subgroup analysis of the AH group, there was no significant
difference between the four subgroup. (“1 week” if the consecutive
duration of antihistamine usage is less than 1 week, “2 week” if the
duration is less than 2 week, “1 month” if the duration is less than 4
week, and “over 1 month” if the duration is equal or more than 4 week)
(p=0.70) (Figure 2)
After adjusting for factors such as sex, age, residential area, and
socioeconomic status, sinusitis was more frequent in the AH group
compared with the non-AH group (HR = 1.53; 95%CI: 1.36-1.72) (Table 2).
As for each factor, the occurrence of sinusitis was not related to a
patient’s income or residential area. Factors that influenced the
occurrence of sinusitis were sex and age. Sinusitis was more frequent in
women (HR: 1.34), and less frequent the older the age (HR: 0.74, 0.58,
0.46, respectively) (Table 2).