Aims: To test the hypothesis that feeding soy formula to infants with congenital hypothyroidism (CH) leads to prolonged increase of thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH). Methods: The study was a review of 78 patients seen during their first year of life between 1990 and 1998. Data regarding clinical diagnosis, date of treatment initiation, TSH, levothyroxine dose, weight, length, and diet information from each visit were collected from the charts. Results: There were eight patients in the soy diet group and 70 in the non-soy diet group. There was no significant difference between the two groups in the starting dose of levothyroxine or the change in this dose over one year. There was a significant difference between the two groups in the following areas: time to TSH normalisation, first TSH on treatment, percentage with increased TSH at 4 months of age, percentage with increased TSH throughout the first year of life, and in the overall trend of TSH at each visit. Conclusions: Infants fed soy formula had prolonged increase of TSH when compared to infants fed nonsoy formula. These infants need close monitoring of free thyroxine and TSH measurements, and they may need increased levothyroxine doses to achieve normal thyroid function tests.

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PurposeTo investigate morbidity associated with overweight and obesity in health personnel and compare the differences among work roles.Materials and methodsThis retrospective cohort study examined measurements obtained during employee medical checkups between 2007 and 2016 in a Taiwan medical center. BMI was used to define overweight (≥24 and <27 kg/m2) and obesity (≥27 kg/m2). Morbidity refers to prevalence, period incidence proportion, and incidence rate. Multivariable Cox model was used to estimate the HRs and 95% CI of the incidence proportion across work roles.ResultsTen thousand six hundred fifty-one health personnel with 24,295 BMI measurements were recruited. Mean age was 33.4±10.7 years and 72.4% was female. In total, 1,992 (8.2%) health personnel were underweight, 13,568 (55.8%) had a normal BMI, 5,097 (21%) were overweight, and 3,638 (15%) were obese. Five thousand nine hundred one health personnel with 31,172 different interval-year arrangement combinations were obtained. The incidence proportion of overweight and obesity was 1,947 (6.2%) and 1,494 (4.8%), respectively. The incidence rate was 37/1,000 and 15/1,000 person-years, respectively. Compared with that in supporting staff, the HR of overweight in doctors, nurses, and allied health professionals was 0.93 (95% CI =0.73–1.18, P=0.553), 0.92 (95% CI =0.73–1.16, P=0.491), and 0.85 (95% CI =0.67–1.09, P=0.202), respectively. Similarly, the HR of obesity was 0.86 (95% CI =0.66–1.14, P=0.301), 0.89 (95% CI =0.67–1.18, P=0.430), and 0.84 (95% CI =0.63–1.13, P=0.248), respectively.ConclusionIn health personnel, the prevalence of overweight and obesity was 21% and 15%, respectively. The incidence proportion was 6.2% and 4.8%, respectively. Morbidity across the four health work roles examined was not significantly different.

The purpose of this study was to test the feasibility of utilizing the established perimenopausal fatigue self-management scale (P-MFSMS) to evaluate perimenopausal Taiwanese women’s vulnerability to fatigue syndrome. A cross-sectional study design was adopted to survey 220 perimenopausal Taiwanese women with a mean age of 51.8 ± 4.64 years and a mean body mass index of 23.07 ± 3.04 kg/m2, 75.9% of whom were married, 52.3% had a college education or above, 80.4% had salaries, 81.3% had small families, and 96.4% were not using hormone therapy. The P-MFSMS consists of 25 questions based on six categories: (1) strive to maintain work energy and efficiency; (2) seek self-help from medical resources (doctor shopping); (3) strive to maintain the normal operation of the family (seeking help and support from family or significant other); (4) make time for activities or exercise in busy life; (5) slow down or adjust lifestyle; (6) frustration. For all of these six categories, the minimum loading of each question on the factor was calculated to be over 0.50, with a Cronbach’s α of 0.78 and a corrected total-item correlation of >0.50. The goodness of fit of the model was determined to be acceptable, with a chi-square/df value of <3.0 (χ2 = 503.45 and df = 260), a root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) value of 0.065 (<0.08), as well as a Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin (KMO) value of 0.892. The Tucker–Lewis index (TLI = 0.91), Comparative Fit index (CFI = 0.92), and Incremental Fit index (IFI = 0.92) were all >0.90. There was no statistically significant difference in the difficulty between perimenopausal and postmenopausal women utilizing differential item function (DIF) analysis. Taken together, the 25-question P-MFSMS may be a potentially valid and reliable instrument for suitably evaluating perimenopausal Taiwanese women’s vulnerability to fatigue syndrome. Future studies will be conducted to test the effectiveness of the P-MFSMS for evaluating perimenopausal Taiwanese women’s vulnerability to fatigue syndrome in clinical practice.