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M. Casale et al.
prevalent endocrine diseases at baseline and by incident endocrine diseases during the follow-up. Age, TSH, and low BMD were associated with both prevalent and inci- dent disorders. Among the markers of iron overload, fer- ritin and T2* were associated with prevalent but not with incident disorders, whereas LIC was not associated with any of them. During the follow-up, iron overload test results either decreased by a small extent or remained sta- ble over time, while the standard deviation of those dif- ferences was more than three times their means. The number of prevalent endocrine disorders was inversely associated with the incidence of a new disorder. Only 11 patients (2.6%) had a side-effect related to DFX adminis- tration (gastrointestinal disorder).
Tables 3A and 3B show the results from the multiple Cox regression models. In both models, the adjusted haz- ard rate of developing a new endocrine disorder decreased by about 50% for each prevalent endocrine dis- ease at baseline (P<0.001) and increased by about 25% for each mIU/L of TSH at baseline (P<0.001). The two models differ in the way in which the variable age was treated. In model 3A age was treated as a log-linear vari- able whereas in model 3B age was treated as a linear vari- able, but in that case, also a binary indicator was included for pediatric/adult patient and an interaction term between age and the indicator as well. The latter model showed a higher adjusted R2 (0.25 vs. 0.22) although that difference was not significant (95% CI: 0.19–0.42 vs. 95%
Figure 1. Overall crude risks for all 104 first incidents (n=426), by incident type and age group.
Figure 2. Crude risks for all 43 first incidents in patients with no endocrinopathies at base- line (n=118), by incident type and age group.
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