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Herpes Zoster as a Risk Factor for Incident Giant Cell Arteritis by Bryant R. England; Ted R. Mikuls; Fenglong Xie; Shuo Yang; Lang Chen; Jeffrey R. Curtis is a Medicine article available to read on EtoBox.

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## Objective Histopathologic studies have implicated herpes zoster (HZ) as a causative organism of giant cell arteritis (GCA). The purpose of this study was to assess the epidemiologic association of HZ events with incident GCA. ## Methods We performed a retrospective cohort study in 2 large independent US administrative data sets: Medicare 5% and Truven Health Analytics MarketScan. Eligible subjects had 12 months of continuous coverage, were >50 years old, and had no history of GCA or polymyalgia rheumatica. HZ events (complicated and uncomplicated) and GCA were identified by the presence of International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification codes from physician visit or hospital discharge records. Antiviral therapies and vaccinations were identified from prescription claims and drug codes. Risk of incident GCA was calculated using multivariable Cox proportional hazards regression. ## Results Among 16,686,345 subjects, a total of 5,942 GCA cases occurred, with 3.1% (MarketScan) and 6.0% (Medicare) having preceding HZ events. Unadjusted GCA incidence rates were highest in the groups with complicated and uncomplicated HZ. After multivariable adjustment,

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Author

Bryant R. England; Ted R. Mikuls; Fenglong Xie; Shuo Yang; Lang Chen; Jeffrey R. Curtis

Publisher

Wiley

Published

2017

Language

EN

Field

Medicine (Health Sciences)