Sheng-Wei Pan

I would like to thank the APSR for inviting me to attend the APSR-ISRD Joint Session in the American Thoracic Society Annual Conference 2019 (ATS-2019) on 18 May 2019 in Dallas, Texas. This was my first time to attend the ATS International Conference and it was my pleasure to represent my research in the APSR-ISRD session in ATS-2019. In the prestigious session, I was awarded a Travel Award for my poster presentation from Prof. Yoichi Nakanishi (APSR Secretary General) and Prof. Kwun Fong (APSR president).

I am a chest physician specializing in tuberculosis and critical care at Taipei Veterans General Hospital in Taiwan. Along with my supervisors, Prof. Wei-Juin Su and Prof. Yu-Jiun Chan, we have reported several epidemiologic studies of tuberculosis in Taiwan. Using a population-based database, we have also established models to investigate the potential effects of candidate drugs as host-direct therapy for tuberculosis. We deeply appreciated APSR for providing us the opportunity to present our research paper entitled "The risk of tuberculosis and other infections in diabetic patients using statins versus nonstatin lipid-lowering agents".

In our poster, we described that statin users had lower risks of tuberculosis than non-statin users and a drug-free group in a cohort of 45,339 subjects with type 2 diabetes. With the use of other negative control outcomes, we found statins treatment was specifically associated with a decreased risk for tuberculosis but not for other infectious diseases.

I was pleased to share the results of our research as a poster presentation in the APSR-ISRD session at ATS-2019. It was a very valuable experience for me to discuss with other young investigators about our research as well as issues in global tuberculosis control.

In the APSR-ISRD session, physician-scientists from the Asia-Pacific region reported interesting studies and imparted knowledge through poster and oral presentation on variegated topics related to pulmonary medicine. It was a prolific learning experience for me to view the work of other APSR members and to exchange ideas with other scholars. I was excited to have the chance to discuss with other young investigators about topics on pulmonary tuberculosis and non-tuberculous mycobacterium-lung disease. Notably, I'm very grateful to Dr Chin-Chung Shu, the best abstract award winner in APSR-ISRD session at ATS-2018, for his coming to encourage and congratulate me in the session.

Once again, I would like to express my thanks to the APSR and ISRD for holding this session and providing me the APSR-ISRD Travel Award at the ATS-2019. I had a wonderful experience in this session that I attended.