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. 2014 Jul 9;9(7):e100913.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0100913. eCollection 2014.

Weekly and holiday-related patterns of panic attacks in panic disorder: a population-based study

Li-Ting Kao  1 , Sudha Xirasagar  2 , Kuo-Hsuan Chung  3 , Herng-Ching Lin  4 , Shih-Ping Liu  5 , Shiu-Dong Chung  6
Affiliations

Weekly and holiday-related patterns of panic attacks in panic disorder: a population-based study

Li-Ting Kao et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

Background: While chronobiological studies have reported seasonal variation in panic attacks (PA) episodes, information on the timing of PA by week-days may enable better understanding of the triggers of PA episodes and thereby provide pointers for suitable interventional approaches to minimize PA attacks. This study investigated weekly variation in potential PA admissions including associations with holidays using a population-based longitudinal, administrative claims-based dataset in an Asian population.

Methods: This study used ambulatory care data from the "Longitudinal Health Insurance Database 2000. We identified 993 patients with panic disorder (PD), and they had 4228 emergency room (ER) admissions for potential PA in a 3-year period between 1 January 2009 and 31 December 2011. One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to examine associations between the potential PA admissions and holidays/weekend days/work-days of the week.

Results: The daily mean number of potential PA admissions was 3.96 (standard deviation 2.05). One-way ANOVA showed significant differences in potential PA admissions by holiday and day of the week (p<0.001). Daily frequencies showed a trough on Wednesday-Thursday, followed by a sharp increase on Saturday and a peak on Sunday. Potential PA admissions were higher than the daily mean for the sample patients by 29.4% and 22.1%, respectively on Sundays and holidays. Furthermore, the weekly variations were similar for females and males, although females always had higher potential PA admissions on both weekdays and holidays than the males.

Conclusions: We found that potential PA admissions among persons with PD varied systematically by day of the week, with a significant peak on weekends and holidays.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Daily mean incidences of patients with PD admitted to emergency departments and 95% confidence interval in Taiwan.
Figure 2
Figure 2. Percent variation of mean daily average of PA ER admissions relative to sample mean, total sample and by gender (2009–2011).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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