We conducted a cohort study among patients age 20–90 years within a National Health Insurance Healthcare system. Information on the use of CHMs and covariates were obtained from Taiwan National Health Insurance Research Database. We used Cox proportional hazards models to estimate the hazard ratio and 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) for all-cause mortality among CHMs users compared to nonusers.
Among 1037 patients studied from 2004 to 2011, median follow-up time 5.3 years and 88 deaths were identified. During the study period, 49% of patients used CHMs and the median duration of use was 2.4 years. We found that significant difference on all-cause mortality among CHMs users (aHR=0.45, 95% CI: 0.27–0.76) compared to CHMs nonusers. All-cause mortality also differed by JWXYS use (aHR=0.26, 95% CI: 0.08–0.83).
This study reveals that the use of CHMs may lower the risk of death in patients with chronic hepatitis B receiving lamivudine treatment. Further randomized-controlled trials are required to validate these findings.