Faculty Bibliography
Searched for:
Department/Unit:Population Health
Total Results:
13264
Judging the Past: How History Should Inform Bioethics
PMID: 27802464
ISSN: 1539-3704
CID: 2296512
Prognostic implications of 2005 Gleason grade modification. Population-based study of biochemical recurrence following radical prostatectomy
OBJECTIVE: To assess the impact of the 2005 modification of the Gleason classification on risk of biochemical recurrence (BCR) after radical prostatectomy (RP). PATIENTS AND METHODS: In the Prostate Cancer data Base Sweden (PCBaSe), 2,574 men assessed with the original Gleason classification and 1,890 men assessed with the modified Gleason classification, diagnosed between 2003 and 2007, underwent primary RP. Histopathology was reported according to the Gleason Grading Groups (GGG): GGG1 = Gleason score (GS) 6, GGG2 = GS 7(3 + 4), GGG3 = GS 7(4 + 3), GGG4 = GS 8 and GGG5 = GS 9-10. Cumulative incidence and multivariable Cox proportional hazards regression models were used to assess difference in BCR. RESULTS: The cumulative incidence of BCR was lower using the modified compared to the original classification: GGG2 (16% vs. 23%), GGG3 (21% vs. 35%) and GGG4 (18% vs. 34%), respectively. Risk of BCR was lower for modified versus original classification, GGG2 Hazard ratio (HR) 0.66, (95%CI 0.49-0.88), GGG3 HR 0.57 (95%CI 0.38-0.88) and GGG4 HR 0.53 (95%CI 0.29-0.94). CONCLUSION: Due to grade migration following the 2005 Gleason modification, outcome after RP are more favourable. Consequently, outcomes from historical studies cannot directly be applied to a contemporary setting. J. Surg. Oncol. 2016;114:664-670. (c) 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
PMCID:5559082
PMID: 27511833
ISSN: 1096-9098
CID: 2296222
Effect of a Long-Term Physical Activity Intervention on Resting Pulse Rate in Older Persons: Results from the Lifestyle Interventions and Independence for Elders Study
OBJECTIVES: To assess the utility of a long-term physical activity (PA) intervention for reducing resting pulse rate (RPR) in older persons. DESIGN: Community. SETTING: Lifestyle Interventions and Independence for Elders Study. PARTICIPANTS: Individuals aged 70 to 89 (N = 1,635, 67.2% women) were randomized to a moderate-intensity PA intervention (n = 818) or a health education-based successful aging (SA) intervention (n = 817). MEASUREMENTS: RPR was recorded at baseline and 6, 18, and 30 months. Longitudinal changes in RPR of intervention groups were compared using a mixed-effects analysis of covariance model for repeated-measure outcomes, generating least squares means with standard errors (SEs) or 95% confidence intervals (CIs). RESULTS: Mean duration of the study was 2.6 years (median 2.7 years, interquartile range 2.3-3.1 years). The average effect of the PA intervention on RPR over the course of the study period was statistically significant but clinically small (average intervention difference = 0.84 beats/min; 95% CI = 0.17-1.51; Paverage = .01), with the most pronounced effect observed at 18 months (PA, 66.5 beats/min (SE 0.32 beats/min); SA, 67.8 beats/min (SE 0.32 beats/min); difference = 1.37 beats/min, 95% CI = 0.48-2.26 beats/min). The relationship became somewhat weaker and was not statistically significant at 30 months. There were no significant differences between several prespecified subgroups. CONCLUSION: A long-term moderate-intensity PA program was associated with a small and clinically insignificant slowing of RPR in older persons. Whether PA can deliver a beneficial reduction in RPR requires further examination in older adults.
PMCID:5173403
PMID: 27787876
ISSN: 1532-5415
CID: 2288532
Cause and context: place-based approaches to investigate how environments affect mental health
OBJECTIVES: Our surroundings affect our mood, our recovery from stress, our behavior, and, ultimately, our mental health. Understanding how our surroundings influence mental health is central to creating healthy cities. However, the traditional observational methods now dominant in the psychiatric epidemiology literature are not sufficient to advance such an understanding. In this essay we consider potential alternative strategies, such as randomizing people to places, randomizing places to change, or harnessing natural experiments that mimic randomized experiments. METHODS: We discuss the strengths and weaknesses of these methodological approaches with respect to (1) defining the most relevant scale and characteristics of context, (2) disentangling the effects of context from the effects of individuals' preferences and prior health, and (3) generalizing causal effects beyond the study setting. RESULTS: Promising alternative strategies include creating many small-scale randomized place-based trials, using the deployment of place-based changes over time as natural experiments, and using fluctuations in the changes in our surroundings in combination with emerging data collection technologies to better understand how surroundings influence mood, behavior, and mental health. CONCLUSIONS: Improving existing research strategies will require interdisciplinary partnerships between those specialized in mental health, those advancing new methods for place effects on health, and those who seek to optimize the design of local environments.
PMCID:5504914
PMID: 27787585
ISSN: 1433-9285
CID: 2288822
Socioeconomic status, white matter, and executive function in children
BACKGROUND: A growing body of evidence links socioeconomic status (SES) to children's brain structure. Few studies, however, have specifically investigated relations of SES to white matter structure. Further, although several studies have demonstrated that family SES is related to development of brain areas that support executive functions (EF), less is known about the role that white matter structure plays in the relation of SES to EF. One possibility is that white matter differences may partially explain SES disparities in EF (i.e., a mediating relationship). Alternatively, SES may differentially shape brain-behavior relations such that the relation of white matter structure to EF may differ as a function of SES (i.e., a moderating relationship). METHOD: In a diverse sample of 1082 children and adolescents aged 3-21 years, we examined socioeconomic disparities in white matter macrostructure and microstructure. We further investigated relations between family SES, children's white matter volume and integrity in tracts supporting EF, and performance on EF tasks. RESULTS: Socioeconomic status was associated with fractional anisotropy (FA) and volume in multiple white matter tracts. Additionally, family income moderated the relation between white matter structure and cognitive flexibility. Specifically, across multiple tracts of interest, lower FA or lower volume was associated with reduced cognitive flexibility among children from lower income families. In contrast, children from higher income families showed preserved cognitive flexibility in the face of low white matter FA or volume. SES factors did not mediate or moderate links between white matter and either working memory or inhibitory control. CONCLUSIONS: This work adds to a growing body of literature suggesting that the socioeconomic contexts in which children develop not only shape cognitive functioning and its underlying neurobiology, but may also shape the relations between brain and behavior.
PMCID:5064342
PMID: 27781144
ISSN: 2162-3279
CID: 2287382
Health in times of uncertainty in the eastern Mediterranean region, 1990-2013: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2013
BACKGROUND: The eastern Mediterranean region is comprised of 22 countries: Afghanistan, Bahrain, Djibouti, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Pakistan, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. Since our Global Burden of Disease Study 2010 (GBD 2010), the region has faced unrest as a result of revolutions, wars, and the so-called Arab uprisings. The objective of this study was to present the burden of diseases, injuries, and risk factors in the eastern Mediterranean region as of 2013. METHODS: GBD 2013 includes an annual assessment covering 188 countries from 1990 to 2013. The study covers 306 diseases and injuries, 1233 sequelae, and 79 risk factors. Our GBD 2013 analyses included the addition of new data through updated systematic reviews and through the contribution of unpublished data sources from collaborators, an updated version of modelling software, and several improvements in our methods. In this systematic analysis, we use data from GBD 2013 to analyse the burden of disease and injuries in the eastern Mediterranean region specifically. FINDINGS: The leading cause of death in the region in 2013 was ischaemic heart disease (90.3 deaths per 100 000 people), which increased by 17.2% since 1990. However, diarrhoeal diseases were the leading cause of death in Somalia (186.7 deaths per 100 000 people) in 2013, which decreased by 26.9% since 1990. The leading cause of disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) was ischaemic heart disease for males and lower respiratory infection for females. High blood pressure was the leading risk factor for DALYs in 2013, with an increase of 83.3% since 1990. Risk factors for DALYs varied by country. In low-income countries, childhood wasting was the leading cause of DALYs in Afghanistan, Somalia, and Yemen, whereas unsafe sex was the leading cause in Djibouti. Non-communicable risk factors were the leading cause of DALYs in high-income and middle-income countries in the region. DALY risk factors varied by age, with child and maternal malnutrition affecting the younger age groups (aged 28 days to 4 years), whereas high bodyweight and systolic blood pressure affected older people (aged 60-80 years). The proportion of DALYs attributed to high body-mass index increased from 3.7% to 7.5% between 1990 and 2013. Burden of mental health problems and drug use increased. Most increases in DALYs, especially from non-communicable diseases, were due to population growth. The crises in Egypt, Yemen, Libya, and Syria have resulted in a reduction in life expectancy; life expectancy in Syria would have been 5 years higher than that recorded for females and 6 years higher for males had the crisis not occurred. INTERPRETATION: Our study shows that the eastern Mediterranean region is going through a crucial health phase. The Arab uprisings and the wars that followed, coupled with ageing and population growth, will have a major impact on the region's health and resources. The region has historically seen improvements in life expectancy and other health indicators, even under stress. However, the current situation will cause deteriorating health conditions for many countries and for many years and will have an impact on the region and the rest of the world. Based on our findings, we call for increased investment in health in the region in addition to reducing the conflicts. FUNDING: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
PMID: 27568068
ISSN: 2214-109x
CID: 2281432
Estimates of global, regional, and national incidence, prevalence, and mortality of HIV, 1980-2015: the Global Burden of Disease Study 2015
BACKGROUND: Timely assessment of the burden of HIV/AIDS is essential for policy setting and programme evaluation. In this report from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2015 (GBD 2015), we provide national estimates of levels and trends of HIV/AIDS incidence, prevalence, coverage of antiretroviral therapy (ART), and mortality for 195 countries and territories from 1980 to 2015. METHODS: For countries without high-quality vital registration data, we estimated prevalence and incidence with data from antenatal care clinics and population-based seroprevalence surveys, and with assumptions by age and sex on initial CD4 distribution at infection, CD4 progression rates (probability of progression from higher to lower CD4 cell-count category), on and off antiretroviral therapy (ART) mortality, and mortality from all other causes. Our estimation strategy links the GBD 2015 assessment of all-cause mortality and estimation of incidence and prevalence so that for each draw from the uncertainty distribution all assumptions used in each step are internally consistent. We estimated incidence, prevalence, and death with GBD versions of the Estimation and Projection Package (EPP) and Spectrum software originally developed by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). We used an open-source version of EPP and recoded Spectrum for speed, and used updated assumptions from systematic reviews of the literature and GBD demographic data. For countries with high-quality vital registration data, we developed the cohort incidence bias adjustment model to estimate HIV incidence and prevalence largely from the number of deaths caused by HIV recorded in cause-of-death statistics. We corrected these statistics for garbage coding and HIV misclassification. FINDINGS: Global HIV incidence reached its peak in 1997, at 3.3 million new infections (95% uncertainty interval [UI] 3.1-3.4 million). Annual incidence has stayed relatively constant at about 2.6 million per year (range 2.5-2.8 million) since 2005, after a period of fast decline between 1997 and 2005. The number of people living with HIV/AIDS has been steadily increasing and reached 38.8 million (95% UI 37.6-40.4 million) in 2015. At the same time, HIV/AIDS mortality has been declining at a steady pace, from a peak of 1.8 million deaths (95% UI 1.7-1.9 million) in 2005, to 1.2 million deaths (1.1-1.3 million) in 2015. We recorded substantial heterogeneity in the levels and trends of HIV/AIDS across countries. Although many countries have experienced decreases in HIV/AIDS mortality and in annual new infections, other countries have had slowdowns or increases in rates of change in annual new infections. INTERPRETATION: Scale-up of ART and prevention of mother-to-child transmission has been one of the great successes of global health in the past two decades. However, in the past decade, progress in reducing new infections has been slow, development assistance for health devoted to HIV has stagnated, and resources for health in low-income countries have grown slowly. Achievement of the new ambitious goals for HIV enshrined in Sustainable Development Goal 3 and the 90-90-90 UNAIDS targets will be challenging, and will need continued efforts from governments and international agencies in the next 15 years to end AIDS by 2030. FUNDING: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and National Institute of Mental Health and National Institute on Aging, National Institutes of Health.
PMCID:5056319
PMID: 27470028
ISSN: 2352-3018
CID: 2281442
Economic downturns, universal health coverage, and cancer mortality in high-income and middle-income countries, 1990-2010: a longitudinal analysis
BACKGROUND: The global economic crisis has been associated with increased unemployment and reduced public-sector expenditure on health care (PEH). We estimated the effects of changes in unemployment and PEH on cancer mortality, and identified how universal health coverage (UHC) affected these relationships. METHODS: For this longitudinal analysis, we obtained data from the World Bank and WHO (1990-2010). We aggregated mortality data for breast cancer in women, prostate cancer in men, and colorectal cancers in men and women, which are associated with survival rates that exceed 50%, into a treatable cancer class. We likewise aggregated data for lung and pancreatic cancers, which have 5 year survival rates of less than 10%, into an untreatable cancer class. We used multivariable regression analysis, controlling for country-specific demographics and infrastructure, with time-lag analyses and robustness checks to investigate the relationship between unemployment, PEH, and cancer mortality, with and without UHC. We used trend analysis to project mortality rates, on the basis of trends before the sharp unemployment rise that occurred in many countries from 2008 to 2010, and compared them with observed rates. RESULTS: Data were available for 75 countries, representing 2.106 billion people, for the unemployment analysis and for 79 countries, representing 2.156 billion people, for the PEH analysis. Unemployment rises were significantly associated with an increase in all-cancer mortality and all specific cancers except lung cancer in women. By contrast, untreatable cancer mortality was not significantly linked with changes in unemployment. Lag analyses showed significant associations remained 5 years after unemployment increases for the treatable cancer class. Rerunning analyses, while accounting for UHC status, removed the significant associations. All-cancer, treatable cancer, and specific cancer mortalities significantly decreased as PEH increased. Time-series analysis provided an estimate of more than 40,000 excess deaths due to a subset of treatable cancers from 2008 to 2010, on the basis of 2000-07 trends. Most of these deaths were in non-UHC countries. INTERPRETATION: Unemployment increases are associated with rises in cancer mortality; UHC seems to protect against this effect. PEH increases are associated with reduced cancer mortality. Access to health care could underlie these associations. We estimate that the 2008-10 economic crisis was associated with about 260,000 excess cancer-related deaths in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development alone. FUNDING: None.
PMID: 27236345
ISSN: 1474-547x
CID: 2281452
Nervous System and Intracranial Tumour Incidence by Ethnicity in England, 2001-2007: A Descriptive Epidemiological Study
BACKGROUND: There is substantial variation in nervous system and intracranial tumour incidence worldwide. UK incidence data have limited utility because they group these diverse tumours together and do not provide data for individual ethnic groups within Blacks and South Asians. Our objective was to determine the incidence of individual tumour types for seven individual ethnic groups. METHODS: We used data from the National Cancer Intelligence Network on tumour site, age, sex and deprivation to identify 42,207 tumour cases. Self-reported ethnicity was obtained from the Hospital Episode Statistics database. We used mid-year population estimates from the Office for National Statistics. We analysed tumours by site using Poisson regression to estimate incidence rate ratios comparing non-White ethnicities to Whites after adjustment for sex, age and deprivation. RESULTS: Our study showed differences in tumour incidence by ethnicity for gliomas, meningiomas, pituitary tumours and cranial and paraspinal nerve tumours. Relative to Whites; South Asians, Blacks and Chinese have a lower incidence of gliomas (p<0.01), with respective incidence rate ratios of 0.68 (confidence interval: 0.60-0.77), 0.62 (0.52-0.73) and 0.58 (0.41-0.83). Blacks have a higher incidence of meningioma (p<0.01) with an incidence rate ratio of 1.29 (1.05-1.59) and there is heterogeneity in meningioma incidence between individual South Asian ethnicities. Blacks have a higher incidence of pituitary tumours relative to Whites (p<0.01) with an incidence rate ratio of 2.95 (2.37-3.67). There is heterogeneity in pituitary tumour incidence between individual South Asian ethnicities. CONCLUSIONS: We present incidence data of individual tumour types for seven ethnic groups. Current understanding of the aetiology of these tumours cannot explain our results. These findings suggest avenues for further work.
PMCID:4852951
PMID: 27135830
ISSN: 1932-6203
CID: 2281462
Trends in UK regional cancer mortality 1991-2007
BACKGROUND: Until 1990, there was an upward trend in mortality from breast, lung, prostate, and colon cancers in the United Kingdom. With improvements in cancer treatment there has, in general, been a fall in mortality over the last 20 years. We evaluate regional cancer mortality trends in the United Kingdom between 1991 and 2007. METHODS: We analysed mortality trends for breast, lung, prostate, and colon cancers using data obtained from the EUREG cancer database. We have described changes in age-standardised rates (using European standard population) per 100,000 for cancer mortality and generated trends in mortality for the 11 regions using Joinpoint regression. RESULTS: Across all regions in the United Kingdom there was a downward trend in mortality for the four most common cancers in males and females. Overall, deaths from colon cancer decreased most rapidly and deaths from prostate cancer decreased at the slowest rate. Similar downward trends in mortality were observed across all regions of the United Kingdom with the data for lung cancer exhibiting the greatest variation. CONCLUSIONS: Mortality from the four most common cancers decreased across all regions of the United Kingdom; however, the rate of decline varied between cancer type and in some instances by region.
PMCID:4742578
PMID: 26766741
ISSN: 1532-1827
CID: 2281472
