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. 2021 Dec 7;11(1):23524.
doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-02996-4.

Risk of depression in patients with oral cancer: a nationwide cohort study in Taiwan

Ling-Yu Kung  1   2 , Tsung-I Li  1   2 , Chi-Hsiang Chung  3   4   5 , Shiao-Pieng Lee  2   6 , Gunng-Shinng Chen #  7   8 , Wu-Chien Chien #  9   10   11   12 , Nian-Sheng Tzeng #  13   14
Affiliations

Risk of depression in patients with oral cancer: a nationwide cohort study in Taiwan

Ling-Yu Kung et al. Sci Rep. .

Abstract

This study investigates an association between oral cancers and the risk of developing depression. We conducted a total of 3031 patients with newly diagnosed oral cancers and 9093 age-, sex-, and index year-matched controls (1:3) from 2000 to 2013 were selected from the National Health Insurance Research Database (NHIRD) of Taiwan. After adjusting for confounding factors, multivariate Cox proportional hazards analysis was used to compare the risk of depression over a 13-year follow-up. Of the patients with oral cancer, 69 (2.28%, or 288.57 per 105 person-years) developed depression compared to 150 (1.65%, 135.64 per 105 person-years) in the control group. The Cox proportional hazards regression analysis showed that the adjustment hazard ratio (HR) for subsequent depression in patients with oral cancer diagnosed was 2.224 (95% Confidence Interval [CI] 1.641-3.013, p < 0.001). It is noteworthy that in the sensitivity analysis is the adjusted HR in the group with depression diagnosis was 3.392 and in the oral cancer subgroup of "Tongue" was 2.539. This study shows oral cancer was associated with a significantly increased risk for developing subsequent depression and early identification and treatment of depression in oral cancer patients is crucial.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
The flowchart of study sample selection from National Health Insurance Research Database in Taiwan.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Kaplan–Meier for cumulative risk of depression among patients aged 20 and over stratified by study group with log-rank test.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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