international journal of epidemiology

OBJECTIVE: To identify the patient reported outcome measures (PROMs) used in clinical trials assessing interventions for chronic pain, describe their psychometric properties and the clinical domains they cover. STUDY DESIGN AND SETTING: We identified phase 3 or 4 interventional trials on adult participants (age >18) registered in clinicaltrials.gov between January 1, 2021 to December 31, 2022 and which provided "chronic pain" as a keyword condition. We excluded diagnostic studies and phase 1 or 2 trials...

The prevalence of diabetes mellitus (DM), a major chronic disease and a leading cause of death and disability around the world, is rising. According to the latest data, the global prevalence of DM has increased to 463 million (9.3% of adults) in 2019 and is estimated to reach 700 million by 2045. Periodontal disease, result of periodontium inflammation, is a common, chronic disease and has long been considered one of the complications of DM. Moreover, literature reflects a spectrum of conflicting viewpoints on the effect of diabetic conditions on the implant treatment strategies...

BACKGROUND: Age-sex specific trend analyses of ischemic heart disease (IHD)-related mortality and prevalent risk factors can improve our understanding and approach to the disease. METHODS: We performed a 15-year retrospective epidemiological analysis of acute and chronic IHD-related mortality and prevalent cardiovascular risk factors using administrative data from Veneto, a socio-economically homogeneous Italian region. Standard mortality statistics using the underlying cause of death (UCOD) and deaths with any mention of IHD in death certificates (MCOD) from ICD-10 codes I20-I25 was performed between 2008 and 2022...

OBJECTIVES: There is a paucity of population-level data on marijuana use and mental health and functioning in older adults. METHODS: We analyzed cross-sectional data (n = 910) from a well-characterized cohort, the Monongahela-Youghiogheny Healthy Aging Team (MYHAT) study. MYHAT is an age-stratified random sample of the population age 65 years and older from a small-town in the USA. Half the sample was female and half were over 75 (Mean age = 77)...

In the case of a food poisoning outbreak, it is essential to understand the relationship between cooking workers and food poisoning. Many biological diagnostic methods have recently been developed to detect food poisoning pathogens. Among these diagnostic tools, this study presents PCR-based pulsed-field gel electrophoresis and nucleotide sequencing diagnostic analysis results for diagnosing food poisoning outbreaks associated with cooking employees in Chungcheongnam-do, Republic of Korea. Pulsed-field gel electrophoresis was useful in identifying the food poisoning outbreaks caused by Staphylococcus aureus and Enteropathogenic Escherichia coli...

Epidemiological evidence points to an inverse association between Parkinson's disease (PD) and almost all cancers except melanoma, for which this association is positive. The results of multiple studies have demonstrated that patients with PD are at reduced risk for the majority of neoplasms. Several potential biological explanations exist for the inverse relationship between cancer and PD. Recent results identified several PD-associated proteins and factors mediating cancer development and cancer-associated factors affecting PD...

Epidemiological surveillance of animal tuberculosis (TB) based on whole genome sequencing (WGS) of Mycobacterium bovis has recently gained track due to its high resolution to identify infection sources, characterize the pathogen population structure, and facilitate contact tracing. However, the workflow from bacterial isolation to sequence data analysis has several technical challenges that may severely impact the power to understand the epidemiological scenario and inform outbreak response. While trying to use archived DNA from cultured samples obtained during routine official surveillance of animal TB in Portugal, we struggled against three major challenges: the low amount of M...

Chagas disease (CD) is a vector-borne Neglected Zoonotic Disease (NZD) caused by a flagellate protozoan, Trypanosoma cruzi , that affects various mammalian species across America, including humans and domestic animals. However, due to an increase in population movements and new routes of transmission, T. cruzi infection is presently considered a worldwide health concern, no longer restricted to endemic countries. Dogs play a major role in the domestic cycle by acting very efficiently as reservoirs and allowing the perpetuation of parasite transmission in endemic areas...

Infant acute lymphoblastic leukemia (Infant ALL) is a kind of pediatric ALL, diagnosed in children under 1 year of age and accounts for less than 5% of pediatric ALL. In the infant ALL group, two subtypes can be distinguished: KMT2A -rearranged ALL, known as a more difficult to cure form and KMT2A - non-rearranged ALL with better survival outcomes. As infants with ALL have lesser treatment outcomes compared to older children, it is pivotal to provide novel treatment approaches. Progress in the development of molecularly targeted therapies and immunotherapy presents exciting opportunities for potential improvement...

BACKGROUND: There exists continuous controversy regarding the benefit of primary tumor resection (PTR) for stage IV colorectal cancer (CRC) patients. Little is known about how to predict the patients' benefit from PTR. This study aimed to develop a tool for surgical benefit prediction. METHODS: Stage IV CRC patients diagnosed between 2010 and 2015 from the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results database were included. Patients receiving PTR who survived longer than the median cancer-specific survival (CSS) time of those who did not undergo PTR were considered to benefit from surgery...

BACKGROUND: Congenital hearing loss (HL), one of the most common paediatric chronic conditions, significantly affects speech and language development. Its early diagnosis and medical intervention can be achieved via newborn hearing screening. However, data on the prevalence and aetiology of congenital HL in infants who fail newborn hearing screening are limited. METHODS: The sample population included 153 913 infants who underwent newborn hearing screening, and the prevalence of congenital HL, defined as moderate to profound bilateral HL (BHL) or unilateral HL (UHL) (≥40 dB HL), in one prefecture of Japan was measured to minimize the loss-to-follow-up rate, a common factor affecting the screening procedure...

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BACKGROUND: Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a serious public health burden worldwide, with a mortality rate of 20%-30%; however, reducing the incidence and mortality rates of TBI remains a major challenge. This study provides a multidimensional analysis to explore the potential breakthroughs in TBI over the past two decades. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We used bibliometric and Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) analyses to analyze publications focusing on TBI published between 2003 and 2022 from the Web of Science Core Collection (WOSCC) database to identify core journals and collaborations among countries/regions, institutions, authors, and research trends...

OBJECTIVE: Tetracycline and macrolide resistance are frequently linked in streptococci and other species. We aimed to assess the association between doxycycline use and azithromycin MICs in oral streptococci. METHODS: Linear regression was used to assess the association between doxycycline use in the prior year and the median MIC per participant of oral streptococcal colonies isolated at the baseline visit of the ResistAZM study. The analysis controlled for receipt of other antimicrobials as well as time since antimicrobial consumption...

Previous studies have suggested that exposure to air pollutants may be associated with specific blood indicators or anemia in certain populations. However, there is insufficient epidemiological data and prospective evidence to evaluate the relationship between environmental air pollution and specific types of anemia. We conducted a large-scale prospective cohort study based on the UK Biobank. Annual average concentrations of NO2 , PM2.5 , PM2.5-10 , and PM10 were obtained from the ESCAPE study using the Land Use Regression (LUR) model...

Prediabetes is an intermediate state of glucose homeostasis whereby plasma glucose concentrations are above normal but below the threshold of diagnosis for diabetes. Over the last several decades, criteria for prediabetes have changed as the cut points for normal glucose concentration and diagnosis of diabetes have shifted. Global consensus does not exist for prediabetes criteria; as a result, the clinical course and risk for type 2 diabetes vary. At present, we can identify individuals with prediabetes based on three glycemic tests (hemoglobin A1c, fasting plasma glucose, and 2-h plasma glucose during an oral glucose tolerance test)...

BACKGROUND: Asian and multiracial individuals represent the 2 fastest growing racial and ethnic groups in the United States, yet most prior studies report Asian American and Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander as a single racial group, with limited data on cardiovascular disease (CVD) prevalence among subgroups. We sought to evaluate temporal trends in CVD burden among disaggregated Asian subgroups. METHODS AND RESULTS: Patients with CVD based on International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision and Tenth Revision ( ICD-9 and ICD-10 ) coding who received care from a mixed-payer health care organization in California between 2008 and 2018 were classified into self-identified racial and ethnic subgroups (non-Hispanic White [NHW], Asian Indian, Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, and multiracial groups)...

OBJECTIVE: We developed a simple, rapid predictive model to evaluate the prognosis of older patients with lung adenocarcinoma. METHODS: Demographic characteristics and clinical information of patients with lung adenocarcinoma aged ≥60 years were retrospectively analyzed using Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) data. We built nomograms of overall survival and cancer-specific survival using Cox single-factor and multi-factor regression. We used the C-index, calibration curve, receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves, and decision curve analysis (DCA) to evaluate performance of the nomograms...

OBJECTIVES: To investigate the association between the individuals' level of sense of coherence (SOC) and periodontal disease severity. METHODS: The study populations originated from two stratified cross-sectional random samples of residents in a medium-sized Swedish city in 2003 and 2013, respectively. The final samples constituted 491 individuals in 2003 and 538 individuals in 2013. The samples were classified into three groups according to the severity of periodontitis (no/minor, moderate and severe)...

INTRODUCTION: Prenatal drug exposure (PDE) is one of the most important causes of child harm, but comprehensive information about the long-term outcomes of the families is difficult to ascertain. The Joining the Dots cohort study uses linked population data to understand the relationship between services, therapeutic interventions and outcomes of children with PDE. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: Information from routinely collected administrative databases was linked for all births registered in New South Wales (NSW), Australia between 1 July 2001 and 31 December 2020 (n=1 834 550)...