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Background: Currently, the association between human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection and subsequent development of autoimmune hemolytic anemia (AIHA) remains unclear. This nationwide population-based cohort study aimed to determine the association between incident AIHA and HIV infection in Taiwan.Methods: During 2000-2012, we identified people aged ≧15 years living with HIV (PLWH) from the Taiwan Centers for Disease Control HIV Surveillance System. Individuals were considered to be infected with HIV on the basis of positive results of an HIV type 1 Western blot. Age- and sex-matched controls without HIV infection were selected from the Taiwan National Health Insurance Research Database for comparison. All patients were followed until 31 December 2012 and observed for occurrence of AIHA.Results: Of 171468 subjects (19052 PLWH and 152416 controls), 30 (0.02%) had incident AIHA during a mean follow-up of 5.45 years, including 23 PLWH (0.12%) and 7 controls (0.01%). After adjustment for age, sex, and comorbidities, HIV infection was found to be an independent risk factor of incident AIHA (adjusted hazard ratio, 20.9; 95% confidence interval, 8.34-52.3). Moreover, PLWH who were receiving highly active antiretroviral therapy were more likely to develop AIHA than those who were not receiving these drugs (adjusted hazard ratio, 16.2; 95% confidence interval, 3.52-74.2).Conclusions: Our study suggests that HIV infection is an independent risk factor for incident AIHA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: In 2003, Taiwan experienced a series of outbreaks of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and 1 laboratory-contamination accident. Here we describe a new phylogenetic analytical method to study the sources and dissemination paths of SARS-associated coronavirus (SARS-CoV) infections in Taiwan.Methods: A phylogenetic analytical tool for combining nucleotide sequences from 6 variable regions of a SARS-CoV genome was developed by use of 20 published SARS-CoV sequences; and this method was validated by use of 80 published SARS-CoV sequences. Subsequently, this new tool was applied to provide a better understanding of the entire complement of Taiwanese SARS-CoV isolates, including 20 previously published and 19 identified in this study. The epidemiological data were integrated with the results from the phylogenetic tree and from the nucleotide-signature pattern.Results: The topologies of phylogenetic trees generated by the new and the conventional strategies were similar, with the former having better robustness than the latter, especially in comparison with the maximum-likelihood trees: the new strategy revealed that during 2003 there were 5 waves of epidemic SARS-CoV infection, which belonged to 3 phylogenetic clusters in Taiwan.Conclusions: The new strategy is more efficient than its conventional counterparts. The outbreaks of SARS in Taiwan originated from multiple sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]