1,721,423 research outputs found
Pre-morbid risk factors for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
No full textBackground As a neurodegenerative disorder with high case-fatality, there is a need to identify primary, modifiable risk factors for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Their detection has, however, proved elusive and this may be ascribed to the scarcity of well-characterised, sufficiently-powered cohort studies necessary to explore the aetiology of this rare condition.Methods UK Biobank is an on-going, closed, prospective cohort study in which 502,524 participants (273,420 women) have been linked to national hospital and mortality registries. Baseline data collection took place between 2006 and 2010 when a range of psychosocial, physiological, and demographic data were captured.Results Approximately 11 years of event surveillance gave rise to 301 hospitalisations and 279 deaths ascribed to ALS. After left censoring to account for reverse causality and adjustment for confounding factors, being older (hazard ratio per 10 year increase; 95% confidence interval: 1.92; 1.58, 2.33) and male (1.37; 1.00, 1.87) were associated with elevated rates of hospitalisation for ALS. Similar effects were apparent when death due to the disorder was the outcome of interest. Of the remaining 23 potential risk indices, however, there was only a suggestion that taller people experienced an increased risk of hospitalisation (per SD increase: 1.31; 1.09, 1.59).Conclusions In the present study, a comprehensive array of potential risk indices were essentially unrelated to later ALS
Life course psychological distress and cardiovascular disease risk factors in middle age: birth cohort study
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Current state of psychosocial epidemiology: Where are we? What are the next steps?
No full textThe ultimate aim of epidemiological science is to improve population health by generating information that facilitates evidence-based guidelines and policies. As outlined in the chapters of this textbook, epidemiological research has already linked a number of psychosocial factors to health outcomes, including social networks, job stress, emotions, religious service attendance and personality types. Although researchers have explored the nature of the observed associations by assessing temporal relationships, the strength of the risk factor–disease link, biological plausibility and modifiability, crucially, for most psychosocial risk factors, causality remains elusive and their value as targets for disease prevention remains unclear. In this chapter, we identify opportunities to improve progress in this field. Three suggestions are made: large-scale collaborative research (‘big data’), precision phenotyping and interventional approaches
Bright children become enlightened adults
Full text linkWe examined the prospective association between general intelligence (g) at age 10 and liberal and antitraditional social attitudes at age 30 in a large (N= 7,070), representative sample of the British population born in 1970. Statistical analyses identified a general latent trait underlying attitudes that are antiracist, pro-working women, socially liberal, and trusting in the democratic political system. There was a strong association between higher g at age 10 and more liberal and antitraditional attitudes at age 30; this association was mediated partly via educational qualifications, but not at all via occupational social class. Very similar results were obtained for men and women. People in less professional occupations-and whose parents had been in less professional occupations-were less trusting of the democratic political system. This study confirms social attitudes as a major, novel field of adult human activity that is related to childhood intelligence differences
Psychosocial epidemiology: key concepts and methods
No full textIn this introductory chapter of The Routledge International Handbook of Psychosocial Epidemiology, we describe the concepts and methods used in the study of psychosocial factors, health and disease, including study designs to obtain robust information and minimise bias. In addition, we discuss the various strategies as well as the challenges of translating evidence into population health improvement. As living standards have improved, absolute deprivation in the material sense (e.g. lacking food and shelter for survival) has receded, at least in high-income countries. Regulatory standards also protect populations from the threat of pollution, contaminated food, and workplace physical hazards. In western societies, risk and protective factors for health are therefore becoming increasingly psychosocial in nature rather than physical. It is within this milieu that psychosocial epidemiology, a discipline linking psychological, social and medical sciences, has flourished. Opportunities for such research are now better than ever before. Assessment of psychosocial factors, such as social relations, life stresses and mood, has become easier with the development of digital survey technology and improved availability of information on social environments, both of which can be linked to individual medical records. The advent of electronic health records and wearable devices provides researchers with a practical way to monitor a person’s health over time and to identify those who are at risk of developing chronic conditions. We contend that psychosocial epidemiology is a growing scientific discipline, both in terms of discovery (i.e. as a study of disease causation and mechanisms) and delivery (as a study of cost-effective interventions)
Locus of control at age 10 years and health outcomes and behaviors at age 30 years: the 1970 British Cohort Study
No full textOBJECTIVE: To examine the relationship between locus of control at age 10 years and self-reported health outcomes (overweight, obesity, psychological distress, health, and hypertension) and health behaviors (smoking and physical activity) at age 30, controlling for sex, childhood IQ, educational attainment, earnings, and socioeconomic position. METHODS: Participants were members of the 1970 British Cohort Study, a national birth cohort. At age 10, 11,563 children took tests to measure locus of control and IQ. At age 30, 7551 men and women (65%) were interviewed about their health and completed a questionnaire about psychiatric morbidity. RESULTS: Men and women with a more internal locus of control score in childhood had a reduced risk of obesity (odds ratio, 95% CI, for a SD increase in locus of control, 0.86, 0.78-0.95), overweight (0.87, 0.82-0.93), fair or poor self-rated health (0.89, 0.81-0.97), and psychological distress (0.86, 0.76-0.95). Women with a more internal locus of control had a reduced risk of high blood pressure (0.84, 0.76-0.92). Associations between childhood IQ and risk of obesity and overweight were weakened by adjustment for internal locus of control. CONCLUSION: Having a stronger sense of control over one's own life in childhood seems to be a protective factor for some aspects of health in adult life. Sense of control provides predictive power beyond contemporaneously assessed IQ and may partially mediate the association between higher IQ in childhood and later risk of obesity and overweight
Cognitive function in children and subsequent type 2 diabetes. Response to Ollson, Hulting, and Montgomery
No full textGoing Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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