PubMed Health⌕ Search

Biomedical subjects

M Susser

Publications and source records attributed to M Susser.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1978

Cognitive development and social policy.

The city of Warsaw was razed at the end of World War II and rebuilt under a socialist government whose policy was to allocate dwellings, schools, and health facilities without regard to social class. Of the 14,238 children born in 1963 and living in Warsaw, 96 percent were given the Raven's Progressive Matrices Test and an arithmetic and a vocabulary test in March to June of 1974. Information was collected on the families of the children, and on characteristics of schools and city districts. Parental occupation and education were used to form a family factor, and the district data were collapsed into two factors, one relating to social marginality, and the other to distance from city center. Analysis showed that the initial assumption of even distribution of family, school, and district attributes was reasonable. Mental performance was unrelated either to school or district factors; it was related to parental occupation and education in a strong and regular gradient. It is concluded that an egalitarian social policy executed over a generation failed to override the association of social and family factors with cognitive development that is characteristic of more traditional industrial societies.

Child↗
PubMed1978

Spontaneous abortion and the use of sugar substitutes (saccharin).

The hypothesis that the use of saccharin may increase the risk of spontaneous abortion was tested in a case-control study. Women who had had spontaneous abortions were compared with women who had been delivered after 28 weeks' gestation. Women with a history of diabetes were excluded from the analysis. The use of sugar substitutes during pregnancy was similar in cases and controls: 5.5 per cent of cases and 5.8 per cent of controls reported using sugar substitutes. The power of the analysis to detect a twofold increase in the frequency of use of sugar substitutes in cases as compared to controls was approximately 81 per cent. The analysis effectively controlled for all known potentially confounding variables: that is, age at last menstrual period, history of previous spontaneous abortions, smoking during pregnancy, and usual weight were controlled in the analysis.

Abortion, Spontaneous↗
PubMed1978

Induced abortion and spontaneous abortion: no connection?

The hypothesis that spontaneous abortion is associated with prior induced abortion is tested in an epidemiologic study. The reproductive histories of a consecutive series of women admitted to hospital with spontaneous abortions were compared with those of a control series of women who delivered after 28 weeks gestation. There is no association between spontaneous abortion and prior induced abortion. The power of the analysis to detect a 30% excess in the frequency of induced abortion in cases as compared to controls is 82% at alpha = .05. The design and analysis effectually controlled for all potentially confounding factors.

Abortion, Induced↗
PubMed1977

Smoking: a risk factor for spontaneous abortion.

We compared cigarette smoking during pregnancy among 574 women who aborted spontaneously (cases) and 320 women with delivery after at least 28 weeks' gestation (controls). Log-linear analysis was used to test the hypothesis that smoking is associated with spontaneous abortion. Several potentially confounding variables--namely, age at last menstrual period and the number of previous pregnancies ending in spontaneous abortion, in induced abortion and in live birth--were controlled in the analysis. Women who had aborted spontaneously reported smoking during pregnancy more often than those with delivery after 28 weeks' gestation: 41% of cases and 28% of controls smoked. The odds ratio for the highly significant association with smoking was 1.8. The association did not vary with age or previous obstetric events. We conclude that smoking during pregnancy is a risk factor for spontaneous abortion.

Abortion, Spontaneous↗
PubMed1976

Mental retardation in a national population of young men in the Netherlands. I. Prevalence of severe mental retardation.

The prevalence of severe mental retardation, derived from military records, is analyzed in terms of time trend, region, religious affiliation and urbanization of birth place. The data are singular in that they are national and virtually complete for a total population of young men, 19-year-old survivors of male births in the Netherlands over the years 1944 through 1947, and they include variables not previously studied. Previous local studies are shown to agree well with the national prevalence of 3.7 per 1,000. Prevalence rose through the four birth years for all forms of severe mental retardation, but most markedly for Down's syndrome. In this condition agency surveys usually yeild equivalent rates to population surveys, and are an economical means of monitoring prevalence. Differences in rates are quite likely to indicate substantive differences. The remarkable similarities in rates from past surveys may reflect a high proportion of chromosomal and genetic abnormalities. The divergence between urban and rural rates over time demonstrated in this paper for four annual cohorts is attributed by inference to disparate increases in survival in different ecologic settings.

Adult↗
PubMed1976

Mental retardation in a national population of young men in the Netherlands. II. Prevalence of mild mental retardation.

The prevalence of mild mental retardation in 19-year-old survivors of male births during 1944-1947 is derived from military records. The data are singular in that they are national, virtually complete for a total population of more than 400,000 men and include attributes not previously examined. They allow for the simultaneous use of three criteria: education (history of special schooling), psychometric (Raven intelligence test score), and clinical diagnosis (ICD (1948) 325.2, 325.3), which yielded rates per 1000 of 30,58 and 61, respectively. Rates by all three criteria varied in similar fashion with father's occupation and with religious affiliation. Rates by the psychometric and diagnostic criteria were higher for rural- and urban-born, while rates by the special schooling criterion were lower for rural-born. These variations are presumed to indicate deficiencies in rural provisions of special schooling on the one hand, and a substantive increment in "true" prevalence on the other. Marked variations in rates by province are not accounted for by social class and urban/rural birthplace. A rise in rates in the 1947 birth cohort on the psychometric and diagnostic criteria but not on the schooling criterion is attributable to a scoring change in the IQ criterion. Relative risks are estimated for the psychometric criterion of low Raven test score according to father's occupation, urban-rural origin, and religious affiliation. The overlap of identification among individuals designated by one, two, or three of the criteria is examined, and the issue of labeling is explored.

Adult↗
PubMed1975

Spontaneous abortion as a screening device. The effect of fetal survival on the incidence of birth defects.

To make sound inferences about the distribution, causes and risks of congenital anomalies requires an understanding of selective survival among fetuses. Studies of spontaneous abortions are therefore advocated. A simple model is proposed of the distribution, among spontaneous abortions and births, of conceptuses with and without anomalies. The resulting equation accomodates both maternal and fetal factors. Interaction between maternal and fetal factors is hypothesized, in the form of a maternal device for screening out anomalous conceptuses. A number of the known facts about congenital anomalies are shown to be plausibly interpreted in terms of the proposed model. Finally, some clinical and epidemiologic implications of the model for the study of spontaneous abortions are pointed out.

Abnormalities, Drug-Induced↗