Prescribed Renoprotective Chinese Herbal Medicines Were Associated with a Lower Risk of All-Cause and Disease-Specific Mortality among Patients with Chronic Kidney Disease: A Population-Based Follow-Up Study in Taiwan

Table 1

Distribution of baseline characteristics between 10,777 alive subjects and 848 deceased subjects who had incident chronic kidney disease.

Variables	Survival (, %)	Death (, %)
		All-cause	value	CKD related	value
Gender
Female	4062 (37.7)	295 (34.8)	0.092	116 (41.6)	0.186
Male	6715 (62.3)	553 (65.2)		163 (58.4)
Age (year, mean ± SD)	53.8 ± 20.8	71.8 ± 14.1	<0.001	69.9 ± 14.2	<0.001
<40	2718 (25.2)	23 (2.7)	<0.001	9 (3.2)	<0.001
40–55	2603 (24.2	89 (10.5)		39 (14.0)
56–70	2663 (24.7)	188 (22.2)		65 (22.3)
>70	2793 (25.9)	548 (64.6)		166 (59.5)
Monthly wage (NTD)
≤15840	4774 (44.3)	584 (68.9)	<0.001	186 (66.7)	<0.001
15841–19200	3764 (34.9)	220 (25.9)		79 (28.3)
>19200	2239 (20.8)	44 (5.2)		14 (5.0)
Hypertension	5212 (48.4)	656 (77.4)	<0.001	220 (78.9)	<0.001
Diabetes mellitus	3257 (30.2)	407 (48.0)	<0.001	148 (53.1)	<0.001
Cardiovascular	2466 (22.9)	329 (38.8)	<0.001	102 (36.6)	<0.001
CCI
0	2633 (24.4)	94 (11.1)	<0.001	39 (14.0)	<0.001
1	2299 (21.3)	131 (15.5)		37 (13.2)
≧2	5845 (54.2)	623 (73.4)		203 (72.8)
Ever being hospitalized before CKD	1009 (9.4)	216 (25.5)	<0.001	109 (39.1)	<0.001
COPD	1540 (14.3)	278 (32.8)	<0.001	76 (27.2)	<0.001
Alcoholic liver disease	1409 (13.1)	132 (15.6)	0.039	47 (16.9)	0.066
Use of analgesics or NSAIDs > 104 pills/year	373 (3.5)	53 (6.3)	<0.001	15 (5.4)	0.086
Receipt of erythropoietin	539 (5.0)	97 (11.4)	<0.001	52 (18.6)	<0.001
Receipt of vitamin D	109 (1.0)	12 (1.4)	0.264	6 (2.1)	0.071
Current RPCHM use
None	8936 (82.9)	770 (90.8)	<0.001	253 (90.7)	0.004
Other RPCHMs	513 (4.8)	25 (3.0)		9 (3.2)
Angelica sinensis	1328 (12.3)	53 (6.2)		17 (6.1)
Ever use of RPCHMs	2046 (19.0)	127 (15.0)	0.004	41 (14.7)	0.070

CCI: Charlson’s Comorbidity Index; CKD: chronic kidney disease; COPD: chronic obstructive pulmonary disease; NSAIDs: nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs; NTD: New Taiwan dollars; RPCHMs: renoprotective Chinese herbal medicines. congenital heart disease.