For each patient with CVERP, the number of days between the index date and the date of the first claim indicating hyperlipidemia or lipid-lowering therapy was calculated, and an "interval pool" containing these values was created.
The date of the first claim of hypertension during the intake period was defined as the index date for each patient.
The waiting period for the chemotherapy initiation was defined as the time window from the date of cancer surgery to the date of the first claim containing chemotherapy drugs [ 17].
We defined new users as those with no prescription records for any antidiabetic drug, including insulin, for one year before their index date (that is, the date of the first claim for their antidiabetic drug).
To ensure that the GnRH agonist use was for incident prostate cancer, men who had a claims diagnosis for a history of prostate cancer, who had their first dose of GnRH agonist more than one year after the date of the first claim diagnosis of prostate cancer, or who had any claims for GnRH agonist use prior to the first claims diagnosis of prostate cancer, were excluded (238 cases).
The delivery date was approximated using the date of the first claim with a delivery code.
An index date was assigned as the date of the first claim for tiotropium, formoterol or salmeterol between January 1, 2006 and June 30 , 2007
The index date was defined as the prescription date of the first claim for a new oral antidiabetes drug during the target period, 1 December 2009 to 28 February 2013.
The index date was defined as the fill date of the first claim for a new antidiabetes drug during the target period 1 July 2007 through 31 December 2008.
Since date of birth was not available in the MarketScan database, we used the date of the first claim with an ICD-9-CM code for live birth or ICD-9-CM V29 (observation and evaluation of newborns and infants) in 2011 to approximate the birth date as >90% claims with a newborn code occurred within 5 days of the first occurrence of the code.
