Demographics, comorbidities, and comedications in newly diagnosed patients with Alzheimer's disease and related dementias: Findings from United States Medicare claims data.

Background: Medicare claims data enables broad characterization of United States (US) patients with Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD). Resulting insights can be used as a reference to describe this population and as a benchmark for generalizability of patients with ADRD enrolled in clinical trials.

Objective: To characterize demographics, comorbidities, comedications, and healthcare resource utilization in US patients with newly diagnosed ADRD, focusing on differences across Medicare fee-for-service (FFS) and Medicare Advantage enrollees.

Evaluating different physician's prescribing preference based instrumental variables in two primary care databases: a study of inhaled long-acting beta2-agonist use and the risk of myocardial infarction.

Purpose: Instrumental variable (IV) analysis with physician's prescribing preference (PPP) as IV is increasingly used in pharmacoepidemiology. However, it is unclear whether this IV performs consistently across databases. We aimed to evaluate the validity of different PPPs in a study of inhaled long-acting beta2-agonist (LABA) use and myocardial infarction (MI).

Antiepileptic drug use in seven electronic health record databases in Europe: a methodologic comparison.

Objective: The annual prevalence of antiepileptic drug (AED) prescribing reported in the literature differs considerably among European countries due to use of different type of data sources, time periods, population distribution, and methodologic differences. This study aimed to measure prevalence of AED prescribing across seven European routine health care databases in Spain, Denmark, The Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Germany using a standardized methodology and to investigate sources of variation.

Methods: Analyses on the annual prevalence of AEDs were stratified by sex, age, and AED.

COPD in the general population: prevalence, incidence and survival.

Worldwide, COPD is a leading cause of chronic morbidity and mortality. Although its prevalence is already well documented, very few studies have measured its incidence. We therefore investigated the prevalence, incidence and lifetime risk of COPD in the general population.

Inhaled anticholinergic drugs and risk of acute urinary retention.

Unlabelled: Study Type--Harm (case series) Level of Evidence 4. What's known on the subject? and What does the study add? Inhaled anticholinergic drugs have been associated with the risk of acute urinary retention (AUR), but this association was never studied under real life circumstances nor was this risk ever quantified. Use of inhaled anticholinergic drugs increases the risk of AUR by 40%.