Joint effects of tobacco use and body mass on all-cause mortality in Mumbai, India: results from a population-based cohort study

The joint effects of tobacco use and body mass on mortality have not been well characterized, although evidence regarding the effect of smoking on the association between body mass and mortality is accumulating. To study the joint effects of these important risk factors, the authors conducted a prospective cohort study of 148,173 men and women aged > or =35 years in Mumbai, India. Subjects were recruited during 1991-1997 and then followed for approximately 5-6 years (1997-2003). During 774,129 person-years of follow-up, 13,261 deaths were observed. Tobacco use increased the risk of death across different categories of body mass, with particularly high risks being observed in extreme body mass categories. Among men, obese smokers and obese never users of tobacco were at 56% and 34% increased risks of death, respectively, compared with overweight never users of tobacco. Similarly, at highest risk were extremely thin males who smoked bidis (relative risk = 3.45) or cigarettes (relative risk = 3.32). Body mass and all forms of tobacco use had independent as well as multiplicative joint effects on mortality risk. Tobacco use and undernutrition are serious problems in India. The current study indicates that obesity may emerge as a serious public health problem with which tobacco use may interact.     

Risk of pancreatitis according to alcohol drinking habits: a population-based cohort study

The association between alcohol intake and pancreatitis has been examined previously in case-control studies, mostly consisting of men. The significance of beverage type and drinking pattern is unknown. The objective of this study was to assess the association between amount, type, and frequency of alcohol intake and risk of pancreatitis. For this purpose, the authors used data on 17,905 men and women who participated in the Copenhagen City Heart Study in 1976-1978, 1981-1983, 1991-1994, and 2001-2003 in Copenhagen, Denmark. Alcohol intake and covariates were assessed by questionnaire. Information on pancreatitis was obtained from national registers. A high alcohol intake was associated with a higher risk of pancreatitis. Hazard ratios associated with drinking 1-6, 7-13, 14-20, 21-34, 35-48, and >48 drinks/week were 1.1 (95% confidence interval (CI): 0.8, 1.6), 1.2 (95% CI: 0.8, 1.8), 1.3 (95% CI: 0.8, 2.1), 1.3 (95% CI: 0.7, 2.2), 2.6 (95% CI: 1.4, 4.8), and 3.0 (95% CI: 1.6, 5.7), respectively, compared with 0 drinks/week (P(trend) < 0.001). Associations were similar for men and women. Drinking frequency did not seem to be independently associated with pancreatitis.     

Daily total physical activity level and total cancer risk in men and women: results from a large-scale population-based cohort study in Japan

The impact of total physical activity level on cancer risk has not been fully clarified, particularly in non-Western, relatively lean populations. The authors prospectively examined the association between daily total physical activity (using a metabolic equivalents/day score) and subsequent cancer risk in the Japan Public Health Center-based Prospective Study. A total of 79,771 general-population Japanese men and women aged 45-74 years who responded to a questionnaire in 1995-1999 were followed for total cancer incidence (4,334 cases) through 2004. Compared with subjects in the lowest quartile, increased daily physical activity was associated with a significantly decreased risk of cancer in both sexes. In men, hazard ratios for the second, third, and highest quartiles were 1.00 (95% confidence interval (CI): 0.90, 1.11), 0.96 (95% CI: 0.86, 1.07), and 0.87 (95% CI: 0.78, 0.96), respectively (p for trend = 0.005); in women, hazard ratios were 0.93 (95% CI: 0.82, 1.05), 0.84 (95% CI: 0.73, 0.96), and 0.84 (95% CI: 0.73, 0.97), respectively (p for trend = 0.007). The decreased risk was more clearly observed in women than in men, especially among the elderly and those who regularly engaged in leisure-time sports or physical exercise. By site, decreased risks were observed for cancers of the colon, liver, and pancreas in men and for cancer of the stomach in women. Increased daily physical activity may be beneficial in preventing cancer in a relatively lean population.     

Impact of health education and screening over all-cause mortality in Japan: evidence from a cohort study during 1984-2002

BACKGROUND: Health education and screening are two components of preventive health services in Japan since 1983. This study investigated their relationships with all-cause mortality as they are studied insufficiently in Hokkaido, Japan. METHODS: This study enrolled 1,532 men and 1,653 women aged 40-97 years from 1,702 randomly selected households of 60 areas during 1984-1985 and followed them until 2002. At baseline survey, staffs of 45 health centers collected sociodemographic, medical, behavioral, and dietary information including health education and screening from study subjects with informed consent. RESULTS: For men, age-adjusted Cox proportional hazard model indicated lower mortality for those who received health education (RR = 0.76, P < 0.01) and screening (RR = 0.83, P < 0.05) than those who did not. Health education showed lower mortality even after adjusting for many variables. Similarly for women, health education (RR = 0.66, P < 0.01) and screening (RR = 0.64, P < 0.001) revealed lower age-adjusted mortality. Almost similar results were found for both services when models were adjusted for many variables and when the deaths including lost to follow-up cases of the first 4 years of baseline survey are excluded. CONCLUSIONS: This study shows protective effects of health education and screening over all-cause mortality for both sexes. However, further studies are needed to confirm the results.     

Average volume of alcohol consumption, patterns of drinking, and all-cause mortality: results from the US National Alcohol Survey

The objective of this study was to investigate the effects of an average volume of alcohol consumption and drinking patterns on all-cause mortality. The sample (n = 5,072) was drawn from the 1984 National Alcohol Survey, representative of the US population living in households. Follow-up time was until the end of 1995, with 532 people deceased during this period. The authors found a significant influence of drinking alcohol on mortality with a J-shaped association for males and an insignificant relation of the same shape for females. When the largest categories of equivalent average volume of consumption were divided into people with and without heavy drinking occasions, serving as an indicator of drinking pattern, this differentiation proved important in predicting mortality. Light to moderate drinkers had higher mortality risks when they reported heavy drinking occasions (defined by either eight drinks per occasion or getting drunk at least monthly). Similarly, when the category of exdrinkers was divided into people who did or did not report heavy drinking occasions in the past, people with heavy drinking occasions had a higher mortality risk. Finally, indicating alcohol problems in the past was related to higher mortality risk. Results emphasized the importance of routinely including measures of drinking patterns into future epidemiologic studies on alcohol-related mortality.     

Associations between sleep disturbance and alcohol drinking: A large-scale epidemiological study of adolescents in Japan

In this study, we attempted to clarify the associations between various sleep disturbance symptoms and the frequency and amount of alcohol use among Japanese adolescents. This study was designed as a cross-sectional sampling survey. A self-administered questionnaire survey was administered to students enrolled in randomly selected junior and senior high schools throughout Japan. A total of 99,416 adolescents responded, and 98,867 questionnaires were subjected to analysis. The prevalence rates of sleep disturbance in the 30 days preceding the day of the survey were as follows: subjectively insufficient sleep (SIS) (boys: 37.6%, girls: 38.7%); short sleep duration (SSD) with less than 6 h of sleep (boys: 28.0%, girls: 33.0%); difficulty initiating sleep (DIS) (boys: 12.5%, girls: 14.1%); difficulty maintaining sleep (DMS) (boys: 10.1%, girls: 10.9%); and early morning awakening (EMA) (boys: 5.1%, girls: 5.0%). Adolescents reporting one or more symptoms of DIS, DMS, and EMA were classified as having insomnia, and its prevalence was 21.5%. The prevalence of each symptom of sleep disturbance increased significantly with the number of days on which alcohol was consumed in the previous 30 days and the amount of alcohol consumed per drinking session (p < 0.01). Multiple logistic regression analyses showed that the adjusted odds ratio (AOR) for each symptom of sleep disturbance, except SIS and EMA, tended to increase with the number of days on which alcohol was consumed and the amount of alcohol consumed per drinking session. The prevalence of sleep disturbance is particularly high among adolescents drinking alcohol. The risk of having each symptom of sleep disturbance, except SIS and EMA, increases with the number of days on which alcohol was consumed and the amount of alcohol consumed per drinking session. These findings reconfirm the need to eliminate underage drinking to ensure good sleep among adolescents.     

Changes in alcohol intake and mortality: a longitudinal population-based study

BACKGROUND: Using alcohol intake at one point in time, numerous studies have shown a J- or U-shaped relation with all-cause mortality. Mortality is lowest among the light to moderate drinkers, with the risk of dying from coronary heart disease higher among nondrinkers and the risk of dying from cancer higher among heavy drinkers. We studied whether changes in individual alcohol intake result in corresponding changes in mortality. METHODS: In a longitudinal study of 6644 men and 8010 women, age 25 to 98 years, who had attended at least 2 health surveys with a 5-year interval between them, we addressed the risk of death after combinations of changes in alcohol intake. RESULTS: Mortality after changes in alcohol intake was consistent with the mortality observed among those who reported stable drinking. Stable drinkers showed a U-shaped all-cause mortality, with relative risks of 1.29 (95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.13-1.48) for nondrinkers (< 1 drink per week) and 1.32 (1.15-1.53) for heavy drinkers (> 13 drinks per week) compared with light drinkers (1 to 6 drinks per week). For coronary heart disease mortality, stable nondrinkers had a relative risk of 1.32 (0.97-1.79) compared with stable light drinkers and those who had reduced their drinking from light to none increased their risk (1.40; 1.00-1.95), and those who had increased from nondrinking to light drinking reduced their relative risk ratio (0.71; 0.44-1.14). Cancer mortality was increased in all groups of heavy drinkers. CONCLUSION: Persons with stable patterns of light and moderate alcohol intake had the lowest all-cause mortality. Individual changes in alcohol intake were followed by corresponding changes in mortality.     

The combined effect of smoking tobacco and drinking alcohol on cause-specific mortality: a 30 year cohort study

Background  

Smoking and consuming alcohol are both related to increased mortality risk. Their combined effects on cause-specific mortality were investigated in a prospective cohort study.     

Cancer mortality in nonsmoking women with smoking husbands based on a large-scale cohort study in Japan

Mortality of 91,540 nonsmoking wives was studied in relation to the smoking habits of their husbands by means of a cohort study in Japan. During 16 years of follow-up, 200 deaths from lung cancer took place. The relative risks of lung cancer in these nonsmoking wives were 1.00, 1.36, 1.42, 1.58, and 1.91 when husbands were nonsmokers, ex-smokers, or daily smokers of 1-14, 15-19, or 20 or more cigarettes daily, respectively. Specificity of association and internal consistencies were observed. Among cancers of each site, a similar tendency toward risk elevation in nonsmoking wives with smoking husbands was observed for nasal sinus cancer, brain tumors, and cancer of all sites besides lung cancer. In interpreting these results, the significance of proximity in exposure to sidestream smoke in Japanese homes was stressed.     

Evaluation of a screening program on reduction of gastric cancer mortality in Japan: preliminary results from a cohort study.

BACKGROUND: Systematic population-based screening for gastric cancer is widely spread in Japan. However, the case-control study method has been the main method used to evaluate the effectiveness of the screen ing to reduce gastric cancer mortality in Japan. METHODS: This article presents a population-based cohort study. A questionnaire about lifestyles and dietary habits was distributed to 36,990 residents in a city of Japan. The response rate to the questionnaire was 92.0%. After ineligible responders had been excluded, 24,134 subjects were classified into screened and un screened groups according to their self-reports of participation in the screening the previous year. We followed them up for 40 months and linked resident death records in the city. We compared mortality from gastric cancer and all other causes between the groups by us ing the Cox proportional hazard model. RESULTS: The follow-up period was 78,156.6 person-years from September 1992 to December 1995. The multivariate relative risks for gastric cancer death of the screened group in comparison with the unscreened group were 0.72 (95% CI 0.31-1.66) among males and 1.46 (95% CI 0.43-4.90) among females. CONCLUSION: Although our data are preliminary, we were unable to demonstrate a large contribution of the present screening program to decreasing gastric cancer mortality. Further follow-up is needed to in crease the precision.     

Weight loss and all-cause mortality: A propensity score matching cohort study

BackgroundWeight loss was supposed to help with decreasing risk of premature mortality. However, results on this topic remain debatable and limited by study design.ObjectiveThe present study aimed to investigate the association between weight loss and all-cause mortality among US adults with overweight or obesity in a national cohort study by using propensity score matching (PSM) analysis.MethodsA total of 5486 pairs of participants were matched in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES, 2003–2015) after PSM. Hazard ratios (95% confidence intervals) (HRs (95% CIs)) were employed to evaluate the association between weight loss indicated by long-term weight loss (LTWL) and all-cause mortality by using Cox proportional hazards regression models.ResultsDuring a median follow-up of 6.8 years, 674 participants died from all-cause mortality. In each PSM match, compared with participants with LTWL < 5%, the HRs (95% CIs) for participants with LTWL of 5–9.9% (2877 pairs), 10–14.9% (1315 pairs), and ≥ 15% (1294 pairs) were 1.18 (0.83–1.68) (P = 0.366), 1.65 (1.17–2.34) (P = 0.005), and 1.91 (1.21–3.00) (P = 0.006), respectively. The significant increased risk of all-cause mortality for LTWL ≥ 15% remained among male, female, participants aged ≥ 65 years, without weight loss intention, with non-communicable diseases, and without exceeding estimated energy requirement.ConclusionWeight loss especially for being ≥ 15% should be cautious for US adults with overweight or obesity.     

In a population-based cohort of diabetes patients, men and women had similar risks for all-cause mortality

OBJECTIVES: To compare death rates of diabetic men and women relative to the general population and to identify sex-specific risk factors for all-cause mortality. STUDY DESIGN AND SETTINGS: In the current historical prospective cohort study, standardized mortality ratios (SMRs) were calculated for 19,657 men and women with diabetes in a large Israeli health care organization compared to the mortality in the general population from 1999 to 2003. In addition, sex-specific survival analyses were performed for men and women separately using baseline data obtained between 1995 and 1999. RESULTS: During the study follow-up (90,899 person-years), 2,924 deaths were identified. The SMR for diabetic women (1.40; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.33, 1.47) was significantly (P<0.01) higher than for diabetic men (1.20; 95% CI: 1.14, 1.26). Age, glycated hemoglobin, serum creatinine, low-density lipoprotein, high-density lipoprotein, dialysis, use of angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors, and insulin were similarly associated with mortality in both sexes. Residing in the south of Israel was related with higher risk among men but with decreased risk among women. CONCLUSIONS: The study indicates that diabetes seems to eliminate the relative protection against death usually seen in women. It also suggests that most risk factors are comparable between the sexes, underlining the importance of similarly intensive disease management in diabetic women and in diabetic men.     

中国老年人慢性病患病、失能与失智状况对死亡风险的影响:基于人群的前瞻性队列研究

  目的  利用基于人群的前瞻性队列研究,分析协同控制后中国老年人慢性病患病、失能和失智对死亡风险的影响。  方法  基于中国老年健康影响因素,跟踪调查2002―2018年共6期数据中13 540位65岁及以上老年人,采用Cox比例风险模型分析慢性病患病、失能和失智与死亡风险的关系。  结果  65岁及以上老年人的生存平均时间为5.75(2.33. 13.00)年。在充分调整混杂因素并协同控制三个维度健康因素后,本研究发现在慢性病患病维度,癌症患者比未患癌症者死亡风险高50%(HR=1.50, 95% CI: 1.16~1.94),而非癌慢性病患病与否与死亡风险的关系差异无统计学意义。在失能维度,日常活动能力受限者比不受限者死亡风险高40%(HR=1.40, 95% CI: 1.32~1.47)。在失智维度,认知受损者相较于未受损者死亡风险高30%(HR=1.30, 95% CI: 1.23~1.37),痴呆患者相较于未患痴呆者死亡风险高26%(HR=1.26, 95% CI: 1.09~1.46)。  结论  在过去20年里,中国老年人健康相关的死亡风险因素主要来自患癌、日常活动能力受限、认知受损和罹患痴呆,提示对于老年人的死亡风险,相较于疾病特别是非癌慢性病患病本身,罹患疾病后的失能与失智尤为值得关注。     

Dietary protein intake and all-cause and cause-specific mortality: results from the Rotterdam Study and a meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies

European Journal of Epidemiology - Evidence for associations between long-term protein intake with mortality is not consistent. We aimed to examine associations of dietary protein from different...