BACKGROUND Both trends in socioeconomic inequalities in mortality, and cross-country comparisons, may give more information about the causes of health inequalities. We analysed trends in socioeconomic differentials by mortality from early 1980s to late 1990s, comparing Sweden with New Zealand. METHODS The New Zealand Census Mortality Study (NZCMS) consisting of over 2 million individuals and ...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate plant sterol intake estimated with the eighty-four-item Northern Sweden FFQ against repeated 24 h dietary recalls (24-HDR) as the reference method. DESIGN Randomly recruited participants from the Västerbotten Intervention Programme (VIP) responded to an FFQ (FFQ1). Over the subsequent 12 months, ten repeated 24-HDR were carried out. After this, a second FFQ (FFQ2) was co...

BACKGROUND The effectiveness of surgery versus observation for men with localized prostate cancer detected by means of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) testing is not known. METHODS From November 1994 through January 2002, we randomly assigned 731 men with localized prostate cancer (mean age, 67 years; median PSA value, 7.8 ng per milliliter) to radical prostatectomy or observation and followe...

multiple sclerosis (ms) is a demyelinating disorder of central nervous system. it involves 8th cranial nerve and its central nuclei and is an uncommon cause of the sensorineural hearing loss. for determining the prevalence of hearing loss (hl) especially retrocochlear type in ms, a cross-sectional study was designed using pure-tone audiometry (pta), otoacustic emissions (oaes), auditory brainst...

BACKGROUND CD4 lymphocyte counts are used to monitor immune status in HIV disease. An understanding of the variability of CD4 counts which occurs in the absence of HIV infection is essential to their interpretation. The sources and degree of such variability have not been extensively studied. OBJECTIVES To establish reference ranges for CD4 counts in HIV-seronegative women and heterosexual me...

BACKGROUND Body mass index (BMI) is the dominating weight-for-height index, but its validity as a body fat (BF) index has not been properly examined. OBJECTIVES Our aims were to establish and validate optimal weight-for-height indexes for predicting absolute and relative (percentage) amounts of BF, to examine whether other commonly available anthropometric variables or age could add to the pr...

STUDY OBJECTIVES To examine sex effects on sleep stages and electroencephalogram (EEG) spectral power in older adults. DESIGN Sleep was polygraphically recorded for 2 consecutive nights, and blood was sampled during the last 24 hours. SETTING The University of Chicago Clinical Research Center. PARTICIPANTS Two groups of healthy nonobese older subjects: 10 men (59 +/- 2 years), and 10 post...