objective: to determine the epidemiology of acute childhood poisoning in shiraz, southern iran. methods: this was a prospective cross-sectional descriptive study, being performed in nemazee and dastgheib hospitals affiliated with shiraz university of medical sciences. the study included pediatric patients (<18 years) referred to our centers due to acute poisoning. demographic and etiological fa...

background & aim: nowadays tuberculosis (tb) is one of the public health concerns in iran. the present study aimed to examine the clinical epidemiology and treatment findings of tuberculosis in babol, northern iran. methods & materials: this cross-sectional study was carried out on medical records of tuberculosis registry pertained to health center of babol, mazandaran province, iran. the inves...

A growing number of studies are reporting simultaneous infections by parasites in many different hosts. The detection of whether these parasites are significantly associated is important in medicine and epidemiology. Numerous approaches to detect associations are available, but only a few provide statistical tests. Furthermore, they generally test for an overall detection of association and do ...

To correct for confounding, the method of instrumental variables (IV) has been proposed. Its use in medical literature is still rather limited because of unfamiliarity or inapplicability. By introducing the method in a nontechnical way, we show that IV in a linear model is quite easy to understand and easy to apply once an appropriate instrumental variable has been identified. We also point out...

Received for publication July 20, 2000, and accepted for publication November 3, 2000. Abbreviations: ARIC, Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities. From the Department of Epidemiology, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD. Reprint requests to Dr. Moyses Szklo, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 615 North Wolfe Street, Suite W6009, Baltimore, MD 2...

Individual cancer susceptibility seems to be related to factors such as changes in oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes expression, and differences in the action of metabolic enzymes and DNA repair regulated by specific genes. Epidemiological studies on genetic polymorphisms of human xenobiotics metabolizing enzymes and cancer have revealed low relative risks. Research considering genetic polym...

The article by Durmus x et al (1) published in this issue of the Journal is yet another important contribution from the Generation R Study in Rotterdam and shows the value of birth cohort studies in life-course epidemiology. The focus of this article is the relation between infant feeding (the duration and exclusivity of breastfeeding and the age at introduction of solid foods) and adiposity at...

Dr A E Fletcher, Department of Epidemiology and Population Sciences, London School ofHygiene and Tropical Medicine, London WC1E 7HT. atenolol, but in an observational study we cannot discount the possibility of confounding factors. Our model adjusted for the most obvious of these (age and smoking), but there may be other unidentified factors. The strength of experimental studies is that randomi...

Large-scale population-based birth cohorts, which recruit women during pregnancy or at birth and follow up their offspring through infancy and into childhood and adolescence, provide the opportunity to monitor and model early life exposures in relation to developmental characteristics and later life outcomes. However, due to confounding and other limitations, identification of causal risk facto...

Confounding should always be addressed in studies concerned with causality. When present, it results in a biased estimate of the effect of exposure on disease. The bias can be negative—resulting in underestimation of the exposure effect—or positive, and can even reverse the apparent direction of effect. It is a concern no matter what the design of the study or what statistic is used to measure ...