Decade Of Birth Research Articles

Trends in disease incidence and survival and their effect on mortality in Scotland: nationwide cohort study of linked hospital admission and death records 2001–2016

ObjectivesIdentify causes and future trends underpinning Scottish mortality improvements and quantify the relative contributions of disease incidence and survival.DesignPopulation-based study.SettingLinked secondary care and mortality records across Scotland.Participants1 967 130 individuals...

The Biological Standard of Living in South Korea: Educational status has the largest impact on height of KNHANES cohorts born from the 1950s to 1980s.

Numerous studies have established a positive association between economic development and physical growth of humans. While South Korea has commonly been credited as the world's fastest growing economy after World War II, multivariate research conducted on the height development of South Koreans remains insufficient, as previous studies were limited to descriptive analysis by exploring broad anthropometric trends. Pooling several waves of the Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (KNHANES), heights of men and women were first plotted by sex and birth decade. Heights of men and women increased from about 169 cm to 176 cm and 157 cm to 162 cm, respectively, over the second half of the twentieth century. Next, upon regressing height on basic social, economic, educational and demographic confounding variables contained in the datasets, individuals born in rural districts were found to be significantly shorter by 0.3 to 0.7 cm than their urban counterparts. Yet, residential dummies proxied by administrative provinces did not come out as consistent in the regressions. Expectedly, individuals with a low household income were significantly shorter (by 0.5 to 0.6 cm) than those in the high income group. Most strikingly, individuals with a high education level were 4 to 5 cm taller than those with low education (no or only elementary education). This suggests that educational status has been the most important factor influencing heights of South Koreans. The latter finding has not been given much discussion in the anthropometric literature, which has traditionally focused on gross-nutritional and income indicators as drivers of human growth.

Attitudes of cattle veterinarians and animal scientists to pain and painful procedures in Brazil

Recent studies have shown that cattle practitioners are concerned about painful conditions and procedures. An understanding of the attitudes toward pain is fundamental to encourage the use of pain relief in cattle. The goal of this study was to investigate the factors that influence Brazilian professionals toward the use of pain mitigation in cattle, primarily during castration and horn removal (e.g. dehorning, disbudding). To reach this objective, an online survey was conducted with veterinarians and animal scientists. The analysis was based on descriptive statistics, chi-squares tests, Fisher exact tests, and Mann-Whitney U tests. The final sample was composed of 147 respondents. Results of descriptive statistics showed that the use of medicine before a painful procedure (i.e., anesthetic, anti-inflammatory, or sedative-analgesic), was higher for adult cattle than for suckled and newborn calves. In newborn calves, those respondents who were more likely to use pain relief agreed with the statements that i) there is missing information about pain control during castration and ii) defensive movements shown by an animal during or after a procedure to justify pain mitigation in horn removal. The primary reasons for choosing a medicine were similar for both procedures: cost, anti-inflammatory effect, analgesic potency, duration of analgesic effect, duration of sedative effect, and route of administration. There was no difference in professional’s decade of birth and pain mitigation use. These results may be useful to decide how to optimize the use of drugs by veterinary and animal science professions, and continuing education should help to increase pain mitigation usage.

Use of Antiasthmatic Drugs and the Risk of Type 1 Diabetes in Children: A Nationwide Case-Cohort Study.

Asthma has been reported to be associated with an increased risk of type 1 diabetes mellitus in childhood, but the reasons are unclear. We examined whether the use of antiasthmatic drugs was associated with the development of type 1 diabetes in childhood in a nationwide, register-based case-cohort study. We identified all children who were born January 1, 1995, through December 31, 2008, in Finland and diagnosed with type 1 diabetes by 2010 (n=3,342). A 10% random sample from each birth-year cohort was selected as a reference cohort (n=80,909). Information on all dispensed antiasthmatic drugs (Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical classification system code R03) during 1995-2009 was obtained, and associations between the use of antiasthmatic drugs and the development of type 1 diabetes were investigated using time-dependent and time-sequential Cox regression models. Dispensed inhaled corticosteroids and inhaled β-agonists were associated with an increased risk of type 1 diabetes after adjusting for other antiasthmatic drugs, asthma, sex, and birth decade (hazard ratio=1.29, 95% confidence interval: 1.09, 1.52, and hazard ratio=1.22, 95% confidence interval: 1.07, 1.41, respectively). These findings suggest that children using inhaled corticosteroids or inhaled β-agonists might be at increased risk of type 1 diabetes.

Association between polygenic liability for schizophrenia and substance involvement: A nationwide population-based study in Taiwan.

Schizophrenia and substance involvement frequently co-occur in individuals, and a bidirectional relationship between the two has been proposed; shared underlying genetic factors could be an alternative explanation. This study investigated the genetic overlap between schizophrenia and substance involvement, including tobacco, alcohol and betel nut use. The study subjects were recruited from the Taiwan Biobank, and genome-wide genotyping data was available for 18 327 participants without schizophrenia. We calculated the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium-derived polygenic risk score (PRS) for schizophrenia in each participant. The significance of the schizophrenia PRS associated with substance involvement was evaluated using a regression model with adjustments for gender, age and population stratification components. The modified effect of gender or birth decade was also explored. The schizophrenia PRS was positively associated with lifetime tobacco smoking in women (OR in per SD increase in PRS = 1.12 with 95% CI 1.04-1.20, P = .002), but not in men (OR = 0.99 with 95% CI 0.95-1.04, P = .74), and the gender-PRS interaction reached significance (P = .006). The OR between PRS and lifetime tobacco smoking increased with the birth decade (P of birth decade-PRS interaction = .0002). In women, OR increased from 0.97 (P = .85) for subjects with a birth decade before 1950 to 1.21 (P = .04) for subjects with a birth decade after 1980; in men, the corresponding OR increased from 0.88 (P = .04) to 1.13 (P = .11). There was no association between schizophrenia PRS and alcohol/betel nut use phenotypes. This study provides evidence for the genetic overlap between schizophrenia and tobacco use in women, and this overlap was stronger in the younger population.

Decreasing human body temperature in the United States since the industrial revolution.

In the US, the normal, oral temperature of adults is, on average, lower than the canonical 37°C established in the 19th century. We postulated that body temperature has decreased over time. Using measurements from three cohorts--the Union Army Veterans of the Civil War (N = 23,710; measurement years 1860-1940), the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey I (N = 15,301; 1971-1975), and the Stanford Translational Research Integrated Database Environment (N = 150,280; 2007-2017)--we determined that mean body temperature in men and women, after adjusting for age, height, weight and, in some models date and time of day, has decreased monotonically by 0.03°C per birth decade. A similar decline within the Union Army cohort as between cohorts, makes measurement error an unlikely explanation. This substantive and continuing shift in body temperature-a marker for metabolic rate-provides a framework for understanding changes in human health and longevity over 157 years.

Analysis of a high-prescribing state's 2016 outpatient antibiotic prescriptions: Implications for outpatient antimicrobial stewardship interventions.

To identify prescriber characteristics that predict antibiotic high-prescribing behavior to inform statewide antimicrobial stewardship interventions. Retrospective analysis of 2016 IQVIA Xponent, formerly QuintilesIMS, outpatient retail pharmacy oral antibiotic prescriptions in Tennessee. Statewide retail pharmacies filling outpatient antibiotic prescriptions. Prescribers who wrote at least 1 antibiotic prescription filled at a retail pharmacy in Tennessee in 2016. Multivariable logistic regression, including prescriber gender, birth decade, specialty, and practice location, and patient gender and age group, to determine the association with high prescribing. In 2016, 7,949,816 outpatient oral antibiotic prescriptions were filled in Tennessee: 1,195 prescriptions per 1,000 total population. Moreover, 50% of Tennessee's outpatient oral antibiotic prescriptions were written by 9.3% of prescribers. Specific specialties and prescriber types were associated with high prescribing: urology (odds ratio [OR], 3.249; 95% confidence interval [CI], 3.208-3.289), nurse practitioners (OR, 2.675; 95% CI, 2.658-2.692), dermatologists (OR, 2.396; 95% CI, 2.365-2.428), physician assistants (OR, 2.382; 95% CI, 2.364-2.400), and pediatric physicians (OR, 2.340; 95% CI, 2.320-2.361). Prescribers born in the 1960s were most likely to be high prescribers (OR, 2.574; 95% CI, 2.532-2.618). Prescribers in rural areas were more likely than prescribers in all other practice locations to be high prescribers. High prescribers were more likely to prescribe broader-spectrum antibiotics (P < .001). Targeting high prescribers, independent of specialty, degree, practice location, age, or gender, may be the best strategy for implementing cost-conscious, effective outpatient antimicrobial stewardship interventions. More information about high prescribers, such as patient volumes, clinical scope, and specific barriers to intervention, is needed.

Height inequality and socioeconomic implications in Korea: analysis of individuals born between 1890 and 1919.

This study examined height inequality as an indicator of income inequality during the colonial period (1910-1945) in Korea. Data were taken from a sample of 1796 male prisoners from a wide range of geographical locations and with varied socioeconomic backgrounds. Height inequality was measured using the coefficient of variation of height (CV) for each birth decade. The results indicated that height inequality, as measured by the CV, increased slightly from 3.32 to 3.35 for the birth decades 1890-99 and 1900-09, then jumped to 3.50 for the birth decade 1910-19. Considering the Kuznets curve, the presented results have socioeconomic implications for Japan's impact in Korea, at least during the early colonial period.

Abstract 640: Breastfeeding pattern and ovarian cancer risk: Results from the Ovarian Cancer Association Consortium

Abstract Background: Ovarian cancer is the fifth leading cause of cancer deaths in US women with few modifiable risk factors. Breastfeeding has been observed to be associated with reduced risk of ovarian cancer in multiple studies. However, prior studies reporting the association between breastfeeding pattern and ovarian cancer risk by histologic subtypes have reported inconsistent findings, likely due to small sample size and lack of details on breastfeeding patterns. The objective of this study is to evaluate the association between breastfeeding patterns and ovarian cancer risk by histologic subtypes using individual questionnaire data from the Ovarian Cancer Association Consortium (OCAC). Method: We evaluated breastfeeding patterns in relation to invasive ovarian cancer risk in 9,807 cases and 12, 971 controls from 13 studies in the OCAC. We performed pooled unconditional logistic regression to evaluate the association between breastfeeding and ovarian cancer risk and used multinomial logistic regression to evaluate the association by histologic subtype. We restricted the analysis to parous women and adjusted for study site, age, body mass index, race, education, oral contraceptive use, number of full-term births, family history of ovarian cancer, and birth decade (to account for change in breastfeeding practice over time). We additionally adjusted for age at first and last births simultaneously when examining the association between first and last age at breastfeeding and ovarian cancer risk. Results: Women who reported ever breastfeeding had a 24% decreased risk of overall invasive ovarian cancer compared to women who never breastfed (OR=0.76, 95%CI: 0.71-0.81) and this association did not differ significantly by histologic subtypes (p-heterogeneity=0.09). Considering only episodes when women breastfed, we observed lower risk of ovarian cancer in women who had longer average duration per episode compared to women who breastfed &amp;lt; 6 months on average per episode (OR=0.85, 95%CI: 0.77-0.93 for 6-12 months; OR=0.77, 95%CI: 0.66-0.89 for &amp;gt; 12 months; p-trend &amp;lt;0.0001). Older age at first and last breastfeeding was significantly associated with lower risk of ovarian cancer compared to women who never breastfed (OR=0.65, 95%CI: 0.58-0.73 for age &amp;gt;30 years at first breastfeeding; OR=0.60, 95%CI: 0.53-0.69 for age &amp;gt;35 years at last breastfeeding). Compared to women who never breastfed, women who last breastfed &amp;lt; 10 years ago had 54% reduction of risk (OR= 0.46, 95%CI: 0.39-0.56) while women who last breastfed ≥ 30 years ago had 19% reduction of risk (OR=0.81, 95%CI: 0.74-0.88). Conclusion: Breastfeeding regardless of age or duration was associated with reduced risk of ovarian cancer. Our findings support the benefit of breastfeeding as modifiable risk factor for ovarian cancer regardless of histologic subtypes, which has the potential for reducing the incidence this deadly disease. Citation Format: Naoko Sasamoto, Ana Babic, Susan Jordan, Harvey Risch, Holly Harris, Mary Anne Rossing, Jennifer Doherty, Marc Goodman, Pamela Thompson, Susanne K. Kjær, Allan Jensen, Joellen Schildkraut, Linda Titus, Daniel Cramer, Elisa Bandera, Weiva Sieh, Valerie McGuire, Rebecca Sutphen, Celeste L. Pearce, Anna H. Wu, Malcolm Pike, Penelope Webb, Francesmary Modugno, Kathryn Terry. Breastfeeding pattern and ovarian cancer risk: Results from the Ovarian Cancer Association Consortium [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2019; 2019 Mar 29-Apr 3; Atlanta, GA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2019;79(13 Suppl):Abstract nr 640.

Augmenting Data Quality through High-Precision Gender Categorization

Mappings of first name to gender have been widely recognized as a critical tool for the completion, study, and validation of data records in a range of areas. In this study, we investigate how organizations with large databases of existing entities can create their own mappings between first names and gender and how these mappings can be improved and utilized. Therefore, we first explore a dataset with demographic information on more than 4 million people, which was provided by a car insurance company. Then, we study how naming conventions have changed over time and how they differ by nationality. Next, we build a probabilistic first-name-to-gender mapping and augment the mapping by adding nationality and decade of birth to improve the mapping's performance. We test our mapping in two-label and three-label settings and further validate our mapping by categorizing patent filings by gender of the inventor. We compare the results with previous studies’ outcomes and find that our mapping produces high-precision results. We validate that the additional information of nationality and year of birth improve the precision scores of name-to-gender mappings. Therefore, the proposed approach constitutes an efficient process for improving the data quality of organizations’ records, if the gender attribute is missing or unreliable.

Diversity of artists in major U.S. museums.

The U.S. art museum sector is grappling with diversity. While previous work has investigated the demographic diversity of museum staffs and visitors, the diversity of artists in their collections has remained unreported. We conduct the first large-scale study of artist diversity in museums. By scraping the public online catalogs of 18 major U.S. museums, deploying a sample of 10,000 artist records comprising over 9,000 unique artists to crowdsourcing, and analyzing 45,000 responses, we infer artist genders, ethnicities, geographic origins, and birth decades. Our results are threefold. First, we provide estimates of gender and ethnic diversity at each museum, and overall, we find that 85% of artists are white and 87% are men. Second, we identify museums that are outliers, having significantly higher or lower representation of certain demographic groups than the rest of the pool. Third, we find that the relationship between museum collection mission and artist diversity is weak, suggesting that a museum wishing to increase diversity might do so without changing its emphases on specific time periods and regions. Our methodology can be used to broadly and efficiently assess diversity in other fields.

Rereading Childhood Books: A Poetics by Alison Waller

Reviewed by: Rereading Childhood Books: A Poetics by Alison Waller Margaret Mackey (bio) Rereading Childhood Books: A Poetics. By Alison Waller. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019. The very first subheading in Rereading Childhood Books sums up one of the book's core priorities: "Paracanons and the lifelong reading act" (2). Waller is referencing Catherine Stimpson's 1990 definition of the paracanon as "a set of texts 'beloved' by individuals and communities of reading" (4). The idea of the lifelong reading act expands on Louise Rosenblatt's concept of the reading act, which embraces a particular reader at a particular time and in the context of a particular community. Waller's concept of the lifelong reading act incorporates remembering and rereading as well as forgetting and misremembering. She suggests that these activities "are not distinct from the reading act, but represent integrated elements that function on a micro level in each tangible, phenomenological encounter with a text, and on a macro level every time that text is conjured up through conscious reminiscence, involuntary memory, rereading projects or shared discourses about childhood books" (5). Whereas the academic study of children's literature places the adult critic and the child reader in separate relationships with the text, Waller argues that an adult reader who returns to a childhood book to re-engage with the experience of reading it is in an intermediate territory where distinctions are not so clear cut. As part of the project that informs this fascinating book, Waller invited 119 readers from eighteen to over eighty (skewing elderly: sixty-five of them are older than sixty, and only eleven are under thirty) to participate in a survey, providing data about childhood reading habits and histories, including specific titles and adult rereading. Forty-five of these participants agreed to take part in follow-up work. In the first phase, they provided as much information as they could about a significant childhood book, and what they remembered about their initial encounter with this book. They then reread the book and kept an account of this rereading, making observations about this reading event as well as what it conjured up in their minds about previous readings. Finally, they reflected on the experience in terms of the differences between remembering and rereading. Waller describes this approach as "autotopographical," arguing that "Reading histories are complex sites of meaning. Autotopography works to map a conceptual terrain that encompasses real and fictional geographies involved in adult memories of childhood books and their relationships with them, at the same time encouraging the reader [End Page 449] and critic to excavate meaning over the course of the life span" (61). The accounts provided by a small number of these individual readers, which appear throughout this book, are both fascinating in their own right and productive of stimulating thought on the idea of reading as a lifelong act. Overall, Rereading Childhood Books offers a rich and sophisticated account of the many ways in which our reading lives are woven into our regular daily existence, not just at any particular moment but over a reading lifetime. My one quarrel with this book is that it offers a fairly thin account of the methodologies used to map these autotopographies. The relatively detailed report that I provided in the previous paragraph was actually assembled from two sources: a terse account on page 11 of Rereading and Waller's 2017 chapter in The Edinburgh Companion to Children's Literature on "re-memorying" as a new phenomenological methodology in children's literature studies. The list of participants supplied in an appendix includes four items of information (two of them heavily overlapping): an estimate of age (eighty-plus, forty-plus, etc.), decade of birth (1920s, etc.), gender, and occupation. There is no indication to mark out the forty-five who volunteered for the second part of the exercise, nor is there any information about the titles that they chose to re-explore (except where this is given in the body of the text as part of the very illuminating discussion that surrounds the provided examples). This book offers a poetics, not a social science document, but it would not have taken much space or effort to enhance...

Race, Age, and Geography Impact Hepatitis C Genotype Distribution in the United States.

To determine the impact of geography and patient characteristics on hepatitis C virus (HCV) genotype and subtype distribution in a large sample of patients under routine clinical care BACKGROUND:: HCV genotype impacts disease course and response to treatment. Although several studies have reported genotype distribution within specific US populations, there are no comprehensive descriptions in large, geographically diverse cohorts. Using data from the Chronic Hepatitis Cohort Study, we present the distribution of HCV genotypes (GT) and subtypes (ST) among a racially diverse cohort of over 8000 HCV-infected patients from four large US health systems. Genotype distribution varied significantly by geographic and demographic factors. In age-adjusted analyses, African American patients had significantly higher prevalence of GT1 (85%) than other racial categories, largely driven by a markedly higher proportion of GT1 subtype b (∼34%) than in Asian/other (24%) and white (21%) patients. GT3 represented an increasing proportion of infections as birth decade progressed, from 4% in patients born before 1946 to 18% of those born after 1976. Within the cohort of "living/uncured" patients, highly elevated alanine aminotransferase (>2 times the upper limit of normal) was significantly more common in GT3 patients, whereas Fibrosis-4 Index scores indicative of cirrhosis were most common in the combined group of GT4&6 patients. Distribution of HCV genotypes and subtypes in the United States is more variable than suggested by previous national-level estimates and single-center studies. "Real-world" prevalence data may improve targeting of prevention, screening, and treatment efforts for hepatitis C.

Secular trends in the age at onset of bipolar I disorder – Support for birth cohort effects from interational, multi-centre clinical observational studies

ObjectiveTo examine any association of birth decade, sex and exposure to alcohol and/or substance use disorders (ASUD) with age at onset (AAO) of bipolar I disorder (BD-I). MethodsUsing data from a representative clinical sample of 3896 BD-I cases recruited from 14 European countries, we examined AAO distributions in individuals born in consecutive birth decades. Cumulative probabilities with Mantel-Cox log-rank tests, pairwise comparisons and Odds Ratios (OR) with 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) were employed to analyze AAO according to birth decade, sex, and presence or absence of an ASUD. ResultsIn the total sample, median AAO of BD-I decreased from about 41 years for those born in the 1930s to about 26 years for those born in the 1960s. In a sub-sample of 1247 individuals (selected to minimize confounding), AAO significantly decreased for males and females born in each consecutive decade between 1930 and 50 (OR: 0.65; 95% CI: 0.51, 0.81), and for cases with an ASUD as compared to without (OR: 0.77, 95% CI: 0.69, 0.87). The best fitting regression model identified an independent effect for each birth decade and an interaction between ASUD status and sex, with a consistently earlier AAO in males with an ASUD (OR: 0.79: 95% CI: 0.70, 0.91). ConclusionsIn BD-I cases diagnosed according to internationally recognized criteria and recruited to pan-European clinical observational studies, the AAO distributions are compatible with a birth cohort effect. A potentially modifiable risk factor, namely ASUD status, was associated with the observed reduction in AAO, especially in males.

T198. A SCHIZOPHRENIA-LIKE BIRTH SEASONALITY AMONG MATHEMATICIANS AND AN OPPOSITE SEASONALITY AMONG BIOLOGISTS: MORE EVIDENCE IMPLICATING BIMODAL RHYTHMS OF GENERAL BIRTHS

BackgroundBased on early-20th century births, a pre-electric illumination time of comparatively normal human exposure to sunlight, studies of schizophrenia (SCZ) found a birth seasonality with two opposite effects: a SCZ-liability peak among subjects born around late-February and an equally significant SCZ-resistance peak among those born six months later, around late-August. We previously investigated this rhythm in connection with a sunlight-dependent bimodal rhythm of general births that, prior to the full advent of electric lighting (but not later), occurred ubiquitously in non-equatorial parts of the world. We found that the SCZ-liability peak coincided with a first, Feb-Mar peak of general-population births (the GP1) while the SCZ-resistance peak coincided with a second, Aug-Sep peak of those births (the GP2). Moreover, in a study of hand and visual-field preferences among professional baseball players, we found the SCZ-liability, GP1-coincident seasonality among players with preferences denoting cerebral asymmetry “deficits” (CADs) and the SCZ-resistance, GP2-coincident seasonality among those with preferences denoting cerebral asymmetry “excesses.” Also, in a study suggested by associations of CADs with artistic abilities, we found the SCZ-liability, GP1-coincident seasonality among groups representing visual, performing and literary art “creators” (VPL-Artists) and the SCZ-resistance, GP2-coincident seasonality among groups representing art critics, historians, curators and other art “observers” (Para-Artists). Together, these findings suggested, as one possibility (but see later), that the SCZ-liability, CAD effects and artistic abilities could all three represent traits genetically or otherwise selected into the GP1 excess population of newborns and out of the GP2 population. The present study of “scientists” was initially aimed at the purported arts/science antithesis.MethodsBirth seasonalities were examined among early-20th century born American scientists and among yet earlier European biologists and mathematicians.ResultsA group representing 1,925 American scientists showed the SCZ-resistance, GP2-coincident seasonality. However, this effect proved to be mostly due to biologists because biochemists, chemists, and physicists showed gradually less seasonality while mathematicians suggested an altogether artist-like, GP1-coincident seasonality. This intimation of a biologist-mathematician antithesis was pursued with an investigation of most major figures in the history of the two sciences from the 15th to the early-20th century. The two groups, numbering 576 mathematicians and 787 biologists, shared the same mean decade of birth, the 1780s, and essentially the same geographic origin in Western Europe. The mathematicians showed a very significant SCZ liability-like, GP1-coincident seasonality while the biologists showed an even more significant SCZ resistance-like, GP2-coincident seasonality. The latter effect was particularly strong among naturalists, anatomists and other groups representing biological “observationalism” as opposed to “experimentalism.”DiscussionThe findings are discussed in light of a) new evidence that the annual photoperiod is indeed alone responsible for both peaks of general births, with the GP1 and the GP2 being caused by maternal periconceptional exposure to, respectively, the summer-solstice sunlight maximum and the winter-solstice minimum, and b) an approach/withdrawal theory of lateralization of basic emotions where the left cerebral cortex would handle external stimuli eliciting complacent emotions towards external realities while the right cortex would handle internal stimuli eliciting disdain for those realities.

The association between lifetime cannabis use and dysthymia across six birth decades

BackgroundThough high rates of co-occurring cannabis use and depression are well-documented, data regarding the association between cannabis use and dysthymia is scarce. The aim of this cross-sectional study was to explore clinical correlations of cannabis use among individuals with dysthymia, as well as the changes in the association between cannabis use and dysthymia across six decades of birth cohorts. MethodsData were drawn from the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions-III (NESARC-III; 2012–2013; N = 36,309). Participants were divided into six birth cohorts (1940s-1990s), based on their decade of birth, and individuals with dysthymia were further categorized by 3 levels of lifetime cannabis use: non-users, non-CUD users, and CUD-users. We compared rates of co-occurring psychiatric and substance use disorders among cannabis users vs non-users and conducted logistic regression analyses in order to determine the odds of dysthymia among cannabis users across six decades. ResultsRates of several psychiatric disorders, such as personality disorders, and substance use disorders were higher among individuals with dysthymia who used cannabis compared to those who did not. The interaction between cannabis use (without a CUD) and birth cohort was associated with a decrease in the odds of dysthymia (OR=0.90, 95% CI 0.84–0.97) and remained significant after controlling for confounding variables. Similar changes over time were not demonstrated for CUD users. LimitationsLikelihood for recall bias and misclassification based on cross-sectional nature of the study and on respondents’ self-reports of symptoms throughout their lifetime. Conclusions and ImplicationsOur study's findings demonstrate that the association between cannabis use (but not CUDs) and dysthymia has weakened over time. These findings highlight the need for further research examining changes over time in the relationship between cannabis use and associated psychiatric disorders.

The association between asthma and type 1 diabetes: a paediatric case-cohort study in Finland, years 1981-2009.

The association between asthma and type 1 diabetes, two chronic, immune-mediated diseases, has been of longstanding interest, but the evidence is still conflicting. We examined this association in a large, nationwide case-cohort study among Finnish children, using a novel statistical approach. Among the initial cohort of all children born between 1 January 1981 and 31 December 2008, those who were diagnosed with asthma (n = 81 473) or type 1 diabetes (n = 9541) up to age 16 years by the end of 2009 were identified from the Central Drug Register maintained by the Social Insurance Institution of Finland. A 10% random sample from each initial birth year cohort was selected as a reference cohort (n = 171 138). The association between asthma and type 1 diabetes was studied using a multistate modelling approach to estimate transition rates between healthy and disease states since birth. Hazard ratios (HRs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated to represent the change in the transition rate between the disease states. After adjusting for sex and birth decade, previous diagnosis of asthma increased the risk of subsequent type 1 diabetes by 41% (95% CI: 1.28, 1.54), whereas previous diagnosis of type 1 diabetes decreased the risk of subsequent asthma by 18% (95% CI: 0.69, 0.98). The findings of the present study imply that the association between the diseases is more complex than previously thought, and its direction depends on the sequential appearance of the diseases.

Vital statistics and early death predictors of North American professional basketball players: A historical examination

ABSTRACT While empirical evidence suggests that elite athletes have superior lifespan outcomes relative to the general population, less is known regarding their causes of death. The purpose of this study was to critically examine the mortality outcomes of deceased National Basketball Association and American Basketball Association players. Death data were collected from publicly available sources until 11 December 2015, and causes of death were categorized using the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision (ICD). Mortality was measured through: i) cause-specific crude death rates (CDR), ii) estimates of death rates per athlete-year (AY), and iii) binary and multinomial regression analyses. We identified 514 causes of death from 787 deceased players (M = 68.1 y ± 16.0) from 16 different ICD groups, 432 of which were from natural causes. Findings showed similar leading causes of death and CDRs to sex- and race-matched controls, higher death rate differences per AY within time-dependent variables (i.e., birth decade, race, and height), and a higher likelihood of dying below the median age of death for black and taller players, although this was highly confounded by birth decade. More complete knowledge of mortality outcomes would provide broad public health applications and disarm harmful stereotypes of elite athlete health.

Do "big guys" really die younger? An examination of height and lifespan in former professional basketball players.

While factors such as genetics may mediate the relationship between height and mortality, evidence suggests that larger body size may be an important risk indicator of reduced lifespan longevity in particular. This study critically examined this relationship in professional basketball players. We examined living and deceased players who have played in the National Basketball Association (debut between 1946–2010) and/or the American Basketball Association (1967–1976) using descriptive and Kaplan-Meier and Cox regression analyses. The cut-off date for death data collection was December 11, 2015. Overall, 3,901 living and deceased players were identified and had a mean height of 197.78 cm (± 9.29, Range: 160.02–231.14), and of those, 787 former players were identified as deceased with a mean height of 193.88 cm (± 8.83, Range: 167.6–228.6). Descriptive findings indicated that the tallest players (top 5%) died younger than the shortest players (bottom 5%) in all but one birth decade (1941–1950). Similarly, survival analyses showed a significant relationship between height and lifespan longevity when both dichotomizing [χ2 (1) = 13.04, p < .05] and trichotomizing [χ2 (2) = 18.05, p < .05] the predictor variable height per birth decade, where taller players had a significantly higher mortality risk compared to shorter players through median (HR: 1.30, 95% CI: 1.13–1.50, p < .05) and trichotomized tertile split (HR: 1.40, 95% CI: 1.18–1.68, p <. 05; tallest 33.3% compared to shortest 33.3%) analyses. The uniqueness of examining the height-longevity hypothesis in this relatively homogeneous sub-population should be considered when interpreting these results. Further understanding of the potential risks of early mortality can help generate discourse regarding potential at-risk cohorts of the athlete population.

Chickenpox seroprevalence among healthcare and social assistance workers in Catalonia (Spain)

Chickenpox is a frequent and contagious disease in healthcare and social assistance settings, and there are limited data on seroprevalence among workers in this sector. We estimated susceptibility to chickenpox among workers, by demographic and occupational variables, and measured the rate of seroprotection after vaccination. A retrospective seroprevalence study of chickenpox (varicella) and serological vaccine response. The earliest recorded varicella serology, analyzed by the ELISA method, was identified for each worker from a health surveillance database of a group of medical and healthcare companies in Catalonia, recorded between 2004 and 2013. The total study population consisted of 2958 workers, analyzed by gender, age, birth cohort preceding and following the introduction of the vaccine in the vaccination schedule of Catalonia (born after 1993), and occupational category, regardless of exposure risk. Vaccine effectiveness was determined in a group of 59 initi lly seronegative workers by measuring ELISA-based varicella titers, obtained at least 2 months after receiving a second dose of the VARIVAX® vaccine. 2820 workers (95.3%) had protective titers (PT) to chickenpox; 507 were men (97.1%) and 2313 were women (95%). The 1993 and earlier birth cohorts had a PT of 95.4% and those born after 1993 had a PT of 80.0%. Among at-risk categories, the PT was 95.2%, whereas among those not at risk it was was 96%. By birth decade, the lowest PT was among those age 60 years or older (93.3%). The postvaccination serological response was 89.8%. The prevalence of protective varicella serologies among healthcare and social assistance workers was similar to that found in recent seroprevalence studies in the general population in Catalonia. Men have significantly higher rates of protection than women. Those born after 1993 have significantly lower rates of protective titers than those born in 1993 or earlier.