Browsing by Author "Chen, Hong-An"

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Increased risk of epilepsy in children with Tourette syndrome: A population-based case-control study
(2016-04-05)
Wong, Lee Chin
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Huang, Hui-Ling
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Weng, Wen-Chin
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Jong, Yuh-Jyh
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Yin, Yun-Ju
The association between epilepsy and Tourette syndrome has rarely been investigated. In this retrospective cohort study, we analyzed a dataset of 1,000,000 randomly sampled individuals from the Taiwan National Health Insurance Research Database to determine the risk of epilepsy in children with Tourette syndrome. The study cohort consisted of 1062 patients with Tourette syndrome aged <= 18 years, and the control group consisted of three times the number of age- and sex-matched patients without Tourette syndrome, who were insurants, from the same database during the same period. The Tourette syndrome group had an 18.38-fold increased risk of epilepsy than the control group [hazard ratio = 18.38, 95% confidence interval (Cl) = 8.26-40.92; P < 0.001]. Even after adjusting for the comorbidities, the risk of epilepsy in the Tourette syndrome group with comorbidities remained high (hazard ratio = 16.27, 95% CI = 6.26-18.46; P < 0.001), indicating that the increased risk was not associated with comorbidities. This population-based retrospective cohort study provides the first and strong evidence that Tourette syndrome is associated with a higher risk of epilepsy. A close follow-up of children with Tourette syndrome for the development of epilepsy is warranted. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Increased risks of tic disorders in children with epilepsy: A nation-wide population-based case control study in Taiwan
(2016-04-05)
Weng, Wen-Chin
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Huang, Hui-Ling
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Wong, Lee Chin
;
Jong, Yuh-Jyh
;
Yin, Yun-Ju
Both epilepsy and tic disorders may share common mechanisms with the involvement of abnormal cortical-basal ganglion circuit connection and dopaminergic dysfunction. However, the association between epilepsy and tic disorders has never been studied. This study investigated the risks of developing tic disorders among children with epilepsy using databases of a universal health insurance system in Taiwan. The data analyzed in this study were retrieved from the National Health Insurance Research Database in Taiwan. The study cohort included children with epilepsy between 2001 and 2007 (n = 2629) and a three-fold age- and gender-matched controls (n = 7887). All subjects were followed up for 3 years from the date of cohort entry to identify their admissions due to tic disorders (ICD-9-CM codes 307.2, 307.20-307.23). Cox hazard regression analysis was performed to estimate the effect of epilepsy on the occurrence of tics. The epilepsy cohort had a higher prevalence of tics (1.7% vs. 0.2%), and a 8.70-fold increased risk of developing a tic disorder compared with the controls (adjusted hazard ratio (AHR) 8.70, 95% confidence interval (CI) 4.26-16.37, p < 0.001). Male patients were observed to have a higher risk of developing a tic disorder (AHR 1.90, 95% CI = 1.04-3.46, p < 0.001) compared to female individuals. Patients with multiple antiepileptic drugs treatment also exhibited higher crude OR for developing tic disorders. This nationwide population-based cohort study, for the first time, demonstrated that there is a significantly increased risk for tic disorders among children with epilepsy. We also found males, attention deficit disorder and the use of multiple AEDs to be independent risk factors of tic disorders. Closely evaluating possible tic disorders would be crucial for improving the outcome and life quality in children with epilepsy. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Is schizophrenia associated with an increased risk of chronic kidney disease? A nationwide matched-cohort study
(2015-01-01)
Tzeng, Nian-Sheng
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Hsu, Yung-Ho
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Ho, Shinn-Ying
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Kuo, Yu-Ching
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Lee, Hua-Chin
Objective: The impact of schizophrenia on vital diseases, such as chronic kidney disease (CKD), has not as yet been verified. This study aims to establish whether there is an association between schizophrenia and CKD. Design: A nationwide matched cohort study. Setting: Taiwan's National Health Insurance Research Database. Participants: A total of 2338 patients with schizophrenia, and 7014 controls without schizophrenia (1: 3), matched cohort for sex, age group, geography, urbanisation and monthly income, between 1 January 2003 and 31 December 2007, based on the International Classifications of Disease Ninth Edition (ICD-9), Clinical Modification codes. Primary and secondary outcome measures: After making adjustments for confounding risk factors, a Cox proportional hazards model was used to compare the risk of developing CKD during a 3-year follow-up period from the index date. Results: Of the 2338-subject case cohort, 163 (6.97%) developed a CKD, as did 365 (5.20%) of the 7014 control participants. Cox proportional hazards regression analysis revealed that patients with schizophrenia were more likely to develop CKD (HR = 1.36, 95% CI 1.13 to 1.63; p < 0.001). After adjusting for gender, age group, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, hyperlipidaemia, heart disease and nonsteroid anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) usage, the HR for patients with schizophrenia was 1.25 (95% CI 1.04 to 1.50; p < 0.05). Neither typical nor atypical antipsychotics was associated an increased risk of CKD in patients with schizophrenia. Conclusions: The findings from this population-based retrospective cohort study suggest that schizophrenia is associated with a 25% increase in the risk of developing CKD within only a 3-year follow-up period.
Predicting Television Ratings and Its Application to Taiwan Cable TV Channels
(2013)
Huang, Hui-Ling
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Lee, Hua-Chin
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Shu, Li-Sun
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Lai, Shih-Chung
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Tsai, Tse-Ming
Using forecast television network ratings, television executives estimate a price to sell time to advertisers. TV rating is an important feedback mechanism because its results greatly affect the immense profits of TV companies, advertisers, and program producers. Therefore, how to select the samples for TV rating investigation plays an important role in predicting program ratings. How to design an accurate predicting model for program rating also is an important investigation. The predicting problem is essentially a bi-objective optimization problem which minimizes the number of samples and maximizes the predicting accuracy of program rating. In this study, we propose an evolutionary approach to designing a rating model (ERM) by simultaneous optimization of sampling sub-area selection and parameter tuning using an intelligent genetic algorithm (IGA). In this study, the ERM is applied to Taiwan Cable TV Channels in Taipei and Taiwan. The experiments show that TV rating prediction of the proposed ERM is efficient smaller than that of using the same number of sub-areas with the largest TV ratings and an optimal prediction program rating by using the selected sub-areas.
SCMPSP: Prediction and characterization of photosynthetic proteins based on a scoring card method
(2015-01-21)
Vasylenko, Tamara
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Liou, Yi-Fan
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Chen, Hong-An
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Charoenkwan, Phasit
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Huang, Hui-Ling
Background: Photosynthetic proteins (PSPs) greatly differ in their structure and function as they are involved in numerous subprocesses that take place inside an organelle called a chloroplast. Few studies predict PSPs from sequences due to their high variety of sequences and structues. This work aims to predict and characterize PSPs by establishing the datasets of PSP and non-PSP sequences and developing prediction methods. Results: A novel bioinformatics method of predicting and characterizing PSPs based on scoring card method (SCMPSP) was used. First, a dataset consisting of 649 PSPs was established by using a Gene Ontology term GO: 0015979 and 649 non-PSPs from the SwissProt database with sequence identity <= 25%.- Several prediction methods are presented based on support vector machine (SVM), decision tree J48, Bayes, BLAST, and SCM. The SVM method using dipeptide features-performed well and yielded - a test accuracy of 72.31%. The SCMPSP method uses the estimated propensity scores of 400 dipeptides - as PSPs and has a test accuracy of 71.54%, which is comparable to that of the SVM method. The derived propensity scores of 20 amino acids were further used to identify informative physicochemical properties for characterizing PSPs. The analytical results reveal the following four characteristics of PSPs: 1) PSPs favour hydrophobic side chain amino acids; 2) PSPs are composed of the amino acids prone to form helices in membrane environments; 3) PSPs have low interaction with water; and 4) PSPs prefer to be composed of the amino acids of electron-reactive side chains. Conclusions: The SCMPSP method not only estimates the propensity of a sequence to be PSPs, it also discovers characteristics that further improve understanding of PSPs. The SCMPSP source code and the datasets used in this study are available at http://iclab.life.nctu.edu.tw/SCMPSP/.