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Biomedical subjects

A Billette

Publications and source records attributed to A Billette.

6 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1992

[Life style of children and obesity in a population of 5-year-old children].

The increasing level of childhood obesity has prompted some research into the early risk factors likely to lead to preventive measures. A case-control study was conducted of a five year-old population in the Rhône and Isère administrative "départements" of France during the children's first visit to primary school, with the participation of 327 obese children and 704 controls. Anthropometric data on the children since birth, together with data on their lifestyles, were collected in interviews with parents. "Family obesity" and "obesity at birth" were found to be closely related to the child's obesity at five years old (adjusted OR = 2.7 and 2.1 respectively). Of the environmental factors, the hypothesis tested paid specific attention to television viewing, snacks between meals and lack of sleep. These three variables were all found to be risk factors of obesity at five years old. However after allowing for parental obesity, the only remaining significant risk factor for obesity at five was lack of sleep (adjusted OR = 1.4). The pathogenic assumptions raised by these results are discussed.

Anthropometry↗
PubMed1992

Risk factors of obesity in a five year old population. Parental versus environmental factors.

To be more effective, the prevention of obesity in childhood should be focused on the population at risk. The purpose of the present study is firstly to find correlations between certain environmental factors and obesity in childhood, and secondly to measure the influence of the environmental factors after taking the parental history of obesity into account. This case controlled study includes 704 controls vs. 327 cases selected in a population of five year old school children. The anthropometric assessment was completed at school. Obesity was defined as a weight for height > or = 2 s.d. using the French weight charts for French children based on sex and height. Interviews of the parents recorded parental overweight and child birth overweight as 'constitutional' factors and family structure, socio-economic level and daily lifestyle (sleep, TV viewing, after school care, etc.) as 'environmental' factors. The results show that parental overweight and birth overweight are closely related to the child's obesity at five years of age (estimated relative risks 3.1 and 2.4 respectively). The environmental factors which contribute to child obesity are: southern European origin of the mother, snacks, excessive television viewing and, more importantly, short sleep duration (estimated relative risks = 1.9, 1.3, 2.1 and 4.9 respectively). A logistic regression model, after taking parental overweight into account, shows that the relationship between obesity and short sleep duration persists independently of television viewing. The hypotheses raised by these findings are discussed.

Birth Weight↗
PubMed1992

Mental health, constraints, and organization of work as interactive variables. A study of word processing secretaries.

The effect of a work constraint is specific to the type of work organization. This article deals with the effects of different types of work organization on the mental health of secretaries. The advantage of choosing secretarial work as a research subject lies in the fact that we can identify three distinct types of work organization: (1) a secretary working directly for someone (the "paired" secretary-boss), (2) the "pool," geared toward keyboard input with no specific pairing of secretaries and authors, and (3) the departmental "team," a hybrid of the two preceding types, characterized by the presence of several secretaries, each one assigned to several authors. A study was conducted on the health problems reported by secretaries in the Québec civil service. Data available from a Santé Québec study, carried out at the same time, allowed us to constitute a general population reference group of secretaries and other working women. The findings indicate that secretaries in the general population are no more at risk than are other similar working women, but that secretaries in the provincial civil service are at risk. Regression analysis shows that the same traditional constraints do not affect secretaries in the same way regardless of whether they are members of pair, pool, or team organizations. This suggests that the context of work organization is an interactive or a "specifying variable" of the effect of work constraints on the secretaries' mental health.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1987

Health problems of data entry clerks and related job stressors.

A study was made of health problems reported by data entry clerks working in two large data pools within the Québec Public Service Administration. In order to collect the data, 350 clerks answered a questionnaire, representing a return rate of 92%. The results indicate that, in comparison with women in other occupations, the data entry clerks have a high rate of occurrence of psychiatric symptoms (measured by the Ilfeld index) as well as a high degree of use of over-the-counter and prescription drugs. In addition, these two problems are more prevalent in full-time clerks than in part-time clerks. The psychiatric symptoms appear related to the combined influence of two main factors: work overload and the monotony of work specialization. A third factor, the quality of the relationships among workers in the pool, also seemed to affect the regular full-time clerks.

Adult↗
PubMed1977

[Not Available].

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Canada↗