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).