Fig. 1

Flowchart. We extracted data on 37,283 individuals with diabetes mellitus (ICD-10 codes: E10−E14) who had started taking sodium-glucose cotransporter-2 inhibitors at least 4 months after enrollment (insurance coverage). Among them, we excluded individuals aged < 20 years (n = 4), those with a prior history of cardiovascular disease or renal failure (n = 7594), those who recorded any cardiovascular disease events or were censored within an induction period (1 month) (n = 1229), those with missing data on cigarette smoking (n = 752), and those with missing data on alcohol consumption (n = 2389). Finally, we analyzed 25,315 individuals in this study