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Roentgenographic evidence for predominant left-sided location of unilateral pleural plaques.

The roentgenographic prevalence and anatomic distribution of pleural plaques were studied in the US Navy Asbestos Medical Surveillance Program population (105,064 individuals as of July 17, 1985). "Definite" or "probable" pleural plaques were noted in 4.4 percent of films. These were unilateral in 19.3 percent of roentgenograms with "definite" pleural plaque and 33.9 percent of films with "probable" pleural plaque. Unilateral findings were more often left-sided than right-sided; a ratio of 287:82 in the "definite" group and 625:287 in the "probable" group. Left-sided predominance of unilateral plaque is a consistent and unexplained epidemiologic finding that may provide clues to pleural pathogenesis following asbestos exposure.

Adult

Design, findings and five-year follow-up of preventive medical lipid intervention clinic in Malmö.

In a separate lipid intervention clinic integrated within the framework of a multiphasic preventive medical population program in Malmö, 401 of 2431 screening attenders in a male birth-year cohort born in 1927 and 1928 had elevated values of triglyceride and/or cholesterol. Hypertriglyceridemia was more than three times as frequent as hypercholesterolemia. Of these attenders 20% had normal values at the second control, 5% did not attend the second test and 92 (31.2%) of the remaining were referred to other clinics because of other high risk factors. Thus, 209 (8.6% of the screening attenders) males born in 1927 and 1928 attended the lipid clinic for isolated hyperlipidemia. Disregarding a 5-year drop-out frequency of 13 sections, a significant reduction in the lipids was obtained during the follow-up period in those remaining in treatment. This study demonstrates the feasibility in taking care of hyperlipidemic individuals after a screening detection program. Detection and treatment of hyperlipidemia should of course also be initiated in the individual case in ordinary medical practice.

Cholesterol

Transmission of leprosy within households.

As part of the leprosy control program, population follow-up studies were carried out during 1962 to 1970 in Gudiyatham Taluk, an administrative unit in South India (population: 400,000). More than 97% of the 23,285 contacts from 5,088 families having a leprosy patient were clinically examined using accepted methodology and confirmed as having or not having leprosy. New cases developing among household contacts of leprosy (secondary attack rates) were determined and studied in relation to characteristics of the index case and that of contacts. The secondary attack rate is defined as the number of new cases discovered in the contacts of leprosy patients per 1,000 person-years, which is equivalent to observing 1,000 persons per year. Nearly two-thirds of all new cases were of the tuberculoid type of leprosy and another one-sixth of indeterminate type. Lepromatous and borderline cases each constituted about ten percent of the total new cases. The total secondary attack rate was 6.8 per 1,000 person-years. Compared to an annual incidence rate of 0.8 per 1,000 in the total population, this incidence rate among the contacts is nearly ten times higher. Such enhanced risks are observed clearly and consistently when studied by the number of patients within a family for both sexes and in various age-groups. The rate for females (6.3 per 1,000 person-year) though less, was not significantly different from that of males (7.1 per 1,000 person-year). The differences observed between males and females for each type of leprosy were also not statistically significant. The risks for children (less than 15 years) are significantly higher than those for adults. Among boys, the maximum risk was observed in the age-group 5-14 years, whereas for females the risk is highest in the age-group 5-9 years, dropping down significantly after that. Furthermore, it was observed that significant differences existed between children and adults only in males but not in females. The secondary attack rates almost doubled when there were multiple index cases in the family. Regardless of the number of index cases, the male-female differences were not statistically significant. Attack rates were significantly enhanced when there was a bacilliferous type of leprosy (lepromatous or borderline) in the family. This was true for the specific attack rates of each type of leprosy too. However, a significantly higher proportion of lepromatous and borderline types is also seen when there is a bacilliferous type of leprosy present. The study reiterates the differences in susceptibility to leprosy among males and females, especially during younger ages. Further immunological studies are necessary to determine the differences in host responses in males and females that produce such a characteristic sex-ratio in prevalence of leprosy. There is still a great need to obtain more data on incidence rates both in general population and among contacts on the basis of prospective observation using acceptable statistical technics in design and analysis.

Adolescent

Relation between aryl hydrocarbon hydroxylase inducibility, serum gamma-glutamyltransferase and serum cholesterol in middle-aged smokers and non-smokers.

Aryl hydrocarbon hydroxylase (AHH) inducibility, carbon monoxide in expired air (CO), serum gammaglutamyl-transferase (GGT), and total cholesterol were compared in equal-sized, age-matched samples of healthy middle-aged males born in 1921, 1934-1936, and 1946 attending the ongoing preventive medical population program in Malmö. AHH did not differ in various age - and smoking or non-smoking groups, and there were no correlations between AHH, GGT, and cholesterol. The findings provide evidence against the recent hypothesis that low cholesterol may mediate or reflect a carcinogenic mechanism through a state of general enzyme induction in the body.

Aryl Hydrocarbon Hydroxylases

A risk factor approach to the alcohol-related diseases.

Alcohol-related disorders belong to the spectrum of major non-infectious diseases in Western societies which are capable of prevention by means that have not yet been fully implemented. The mortality in a population of 10,353 middle-aged males invited to a preventive medical population program in Malmö was assessed for 1.5-6.5 years (mean 4.5 years) after the time of invitation and analysed in relation to participation or non-participation. The characteristics at entry of the 7948 males who participated in screening were compared in order to evaluate risk factor patterns for the major categories of premature death during the follow-up period. Among the non-participants for screening the mortality rate was twice as high, and the death rate due to alcohol-related diseases was five times higher than among the participants. There were no significant differences between participants and non-participants in the other death causes. The autopsy rate was high, at 87.8%. Even in the males participating in the screening, alcohol-related deaths constituted a major mortality category, comprising 55 of 218 cases, whereas cancer comprised 61 and coronary heart disease 50 of the premature deaths in this group. In these three main categories of male premature mortality, significant and distinctly differential risk factor patterns were found. Risk factors for coronary heart disease involved smoking, serum cholesterol, triglycerides and systolic blood pressure, and for alcohol-related deaths involved gamma-glutamyltransferase, an alcoholism screening questionnaire and, inversely, serum cholesterol and serum creatinine. In both groups of diseases, these risk factors could be combined into a highly predictive multiple logistic risk factor function. The discriminative power of this instrument was higher for the alcohol-related deaths than for the coronary heart disease deaths. Malignant and alcohol-related diseases constituted at least equally prominent categories as the cardiovascular disorders among the deaths that occurred within middle age in these cohorts. All of these conditions are potentially avoidable and are associated with significant and distinctive risk factor patterns. Risk factors may be applied to the alcohol-related disorders as signals for preventive measures in analogy with tested methods for the regulation of blood pressure and serum lipids.

Alcoholism

Molecular basis and prenatal diagnosis of beta-thalassemia.

The molecular characterization of mutations producing beta-thalassemia in world populations is nearing completion. We expect that new rare alleles in thoroughly studied groups and other alleles in less studied groups, eg, inhabitants of New Guinea, Latin America, and certain Pacific Islands, will be found. Knowledge of the molecular basis of the disease and new technology that allows rapid detection of single nucleotide changes in genomic DNA have led to the reality of prenatal diagnosis by direct mutation detection even in the heterogeneous US population. Programs aimed at prevention of beta-thalassemia should be facilitated by these developments.

Humans

A cost-based decision analysis for Chlamydia screening in California family planning clinics.

Antibody-based methods for the diagnosis of Chlamydia trachomatis infection of the cervix have recently made population screening programs possible for this epidemic and frequently asymptomatic problem. We constructed a decision model, using medical care costs as utilities, to determine the total costs of screening and of not screening in California state-funded family planning clinics, and to determine the prevalence of infection at which such screening could be expected to pay for itself. A net savings of $6 million would be realized in the first year, with annual savings eventually increasing to over $13 million, from the prevention of chlamydia-associated pelvic inflammatory disease and other long-term sequelae such as tubal infertility and ectopic pregnancy. Over $60 million could be saved in the first five years of such a statewide screening program. In populations with infection prevalence of 2% or more, such screening will pay for itself and can be considered "cost-effective." Screening of asymptomatic women for chlamydia should be carried out in most American family planning clinics.

Chlamydia Infections

Health education and public health policies for detection, prevention, and treatment of hypertension.

Health education and policy issues in high blood pressure concern concepts and actions for prevention, early detection, and long-term control. Complementary modes of dissemination of the health education message are a medical preventive ("high-risk") strategy and community-oriented programs ("population strategy"). Today, a clear preventive message can be given to the public to prevent and control high blood pressure in whole communities. Data from a Swiss health survey show avenues for future action. Although not only health information matters to the general population, but also easy access to services ("enabling factors"), factors such as health knowledge and attitudes and the presence of a supporting partner ("predisposing factors") are of additional importance for hypertensive patients. For future action, then, the health message should be intensified, and more research on the nature and kind of information is warranted.

Community Health Services

[A population survey on a mass screening program for gastric cancer. 1. Population characteristics related to examination rates for the screening program].

The types of examination received for gastric cancer during the past 3 years have been surveyed by a self-administered questionnaire among residents of a small town near Kitakyushu City. Among 3660 surveyed, 2205 subjects who completed the questionnaire are analyzed in this study. Examination rates of mass screening for males were higher than those for females. Males in their forties and fifties and females in their forties through sixties have higher examination rates than other age groups. Higher examination rates were seen in public officials and employees who have opportunities to receive the screening program at work site. On the other hand, among people without a job and housewives who have opportunities to receive a screening program offered only by the town hall, examination rates of the mass screening program were low. More people with a family history of cancer death were examined than those without a similar family history. There was no difference in the examination rates by the mass screening program between the people who took care of their health and those who did not. In order to raise examination rates for the mass screening program, it is essential to improve the systems of this program which can be easily accepted, and to educate residents in order to stimulate motivation for screening.

Adult

Calculation of survival curves and statistical comparison of two censored populations: a computer program in BASIC.

In experimental aging research the handling of censored data imposes a serious problem in the calculation of survival curves of partly censored populations and the statistical comparison of such populations. The presented computer program combines a method to calculate a corrected survival curve and a test to compare two censored populations. In both methods, the proportion of the animals that survive or die during an interval and the number at risk at the start of that interval is used in the calculation of relative survival or death during that interval. The program is written in an elementary BASIC and will run on practically every computer programmable in BASIC. The presented method can be used for testing the difference between survival characteristics of two animal populations but might also be employed in evaluating the effect of a medical treatment.

Aging

A method of planning a dental treatment program for an institutionalized population.

A dental treatment program, for a subnormal group in an institution near London, England, was designed by applying both epidemiologic data and empirically derived data from the Experimental Dental Care Project at The London Hospital Dental School. For the epidemiologic study, a two-examiner system was developed to help overcome the special problems of examining subnormal adults. The data collected in the study had to be flexible enough to allow the analysis of several alternative treatment strategies. Once these alternative treatment strategies were defined, the data from the Experimental Dental Care Project were applied to analyze the effects of using dental teams of varying composition to carry out the treatment. It was found that to meet the dental needs of the group, a team consisting of one dentist, three New Cross auxiliaries and one dental surgery assistant would be 30% less expensive than a traditional team of one dentist and one assistant. This larger team would also be able to complete the necessary initial treatment in less than half the time that the traditional team would require.

Adolescent

The prevalence and correlates of Rose Questionnaire angina among women and men in the Lipid Research Clinics Program Prevalence Study population.

The prevalence and correlates of Rose Questionnaire angina were investigated in a sample of 4,661 white woman and men aged 30 years and above who participated in the Lipid Research Clinics Program Prevalence Study 1972-1976. Among men, the prevalence of Rose angina increased with age from about 1% to 12%, while the prevalence among women ranged from about 3% to 6%. Young women compared with men also had a relatively high prevalence of dyspnea, which was strongly correlated with Rose angina in both sexes. For women and men younger than 50 years, the dyspnea-Rose angina odds ratio was about 6 (p less than 0.001), while older women and men had somewhat lower sand higher odds ratios, respectively. Major and minor resting electrocardiographic abnormalities and self-reported history of a heart attack were not significantly associated with Rose angina among young participants of either sex, but they did show positive associations among older participants with the exception of minor electrocardiographic abnormalities in men. A logistic regression analysis revealed a strong inverse association between high density lipoprotein cholesterol and Rose angina in both sexes. Because mortality studies consistently show an excess of coronary heart disease death among young men compared with women, the female excess of Rose angina at young ages suggests that the grouping of angina and myocardial infarction into a single endpoint in cardiovascular disease studies may be more appropriate for young men than for young women.

Adult

Identification of women at increased risk for breast cancer in a population-based screening program.

A multivariate model to assess breast cancer risk was developed by Gail et al. (M. H. Gail, L. A. Brinton, D. B. Byar, D. K. Corle, S. B. Green, C. Schairer, and J. J. Mulvihill, J. Natl. Cancer Inst., 81: 1879-1886, 1989) based on data analysis of the Breast Cancer Detection and Demonstration Project. We evaluated the model's usefulness for assigning women to risk groups for counseling and follow-up by applying it to the 1987 Texas Breast Screening Project data. We identified 3165 women with one or more first-degree relatives affected with breast cancer. The mean risk score for the group was 3.3 (range, 2.7-11.8), indicating a greater than 3-fold elevated risk. The mean risk score for the remaining 27,439 women without affected first-degree relatives was 1.5 (range, 1.24-3.2). Risk perception was found to be a motivator for participation. Women with a risk score greater than 5 perceived themselves to be at high risk for breast cancer. The perception of risk was related to the type of affected first-degree relatives: 80.0% of the women with three affected first-degree relatives and 71.5% of women whose mother and sister were both affected with breast cancer perceived themselves to be at high risk. The Gail model is potentially useful in the clinical setting because women at high risk for breast cancer can be entered into etiological studies, enrolled in primary prevention trials, or referred to programs seeking to improve compliance with screening mammography. The Gail model needs validation, but it is useful for estimating the risk of breast cancer in large populations.

Adult

[Epidemiologic foundation for population studies of program MZ-XVII].

Epidemiological foundation included: aim of studies, knowledge about epidemiology of thyroid disorders in Poland, evaluation of radioiodine dose accumulated in thyroids of inhabitants of different age living in different par of Poland, information about relative diet iodine deficiency in different parts of Poland and identification of research teams (manpower) capable to carry on population studies. The final identification of epidemiological foundation was proceeded by pilot studies performed in 4 different regions of Poland. Finally it was decided that population studies would be performed in so called Regions of 6 different University Medical Schools (Białystok, Kraków, Lódź, Poznań, Szczecin, Wrocław). The sample will be selected randomly on the base of information from the voting lists (random selection of vovoidoship, then towns and villages, then streets and number of houses, then number of flats. All living in selected flat or house during Czernobyl accident and born between January 1974 and December 1985 (children) and between January 1926 and December 1973 (adults) will be considered "the sample". In all cases the sample will be examined by means of unified questionnaire and protocol of medical and laboratory examination. The same kits (of the same producers) will be used to evaluate serum TSH, T4, T3 and thyroid autoantibodies. The data obtained will be evaluated by unified computerized system. Separate studies involved the sample of newborns exposed to radioiodine during last trimester of pregnancy, found to be euthyroid and given potassium iodide in first days of life. Separate system was also used to investigate effect of radioiodine and of prophylactic dose of potassium iodide in those with past history of thyroid disorders.

Adult