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Table 1 Demographic and clinical characteristics of episodes of new allopurinol users (baseline with no ventricular arrhythmias; baseline was 365 days)

From: Allopurinol and the risk of ventricular arrhythmias in the elderly: a study using US Medicare data

 

All new allopurinol use episodes

Allopurinol new use episodesa associated with versus without ventricular arrhythmias (VA) during the follow-up

P value

 

VA

No VA

 

Total, N (episodes)

28,755

2538

26,217

 

Age, mean (SD)

76.6 (7.4)

77.2 (7.3)

76.5 (7.5)

< 0.0001

Sex, N (%)

   

< 0.0001

 Male

14,074 (48.9%)

1369 (53.9%)

12,705 (48.5%)

 

 Female

14,681 (51.1%)

1169 (46.1%)

13,512 (51.5%)

 

Race/Ethnicity, N (%)

   

< 0.0001

 White

22,693 (78.9%)

1976 (77.9%)

20,717 (79.0%)

 

 Black

3510 (12.2%)

382 (15.1%)

3128 (11.9%)

 

 Hispanic

606 (2.1%)

49 (1.9%)

557 (2.1%)

 

 Asian

1268 (4.4%)

89 (3.5%)

1179 (4.5%)

 

 Native American

97 (0.3%)

7 (0.3%)

90 (0.3%)

 

 Other/unknown

581 (2.0%)

35 (1.4%)

546 (2.1%)

 

Region, N (%)

   

0.03

 Northeast

4607 (16.0%)

460 (18.1%)

4147 (15.8%)

 

 Midwest

7315 (25.4%)

626 (24.7%)

6689 (25.5%)

 

 South

11,563 (40.2%)

1003 (39.5%)

10,560 (40.3%)

 

 West

5270 (18.3%)

449 (8.5%)

4821 (18.4%)

 

Charlson–Romano comorbidity score

3.65 (3.25)

4.79 (3.40)

3.54 (3.21)

< 0.0001

  1. SD, standard deviation
  2. aAll data are at episode level
  3. Significant P values are in bold