CONTEXT Serum total bilirubin levels in healthy patients reflect genetic and environmental factors that could influence the risk of developing respiratory disease. OBJECTIVE To examine the relationship between bilirubin levels and respiratory disease. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS Cohort study among 504,206 adults from a UK primary care research database (the Health Improvement Network)...

OBJECTIVE To investigate whether implementing a bundle, defined as a set of evidence-based practices performed collectively, can reduce 30-day surgical site infections. METHODS Baseline surgical site infection rates were determined retrospectively for cases of open uterine cancer, ovarian cancer without bowel resection, and ovarian cancer with bowel resection between January 1, 2010, and Dece...

OBJECTIVE This report updates our earlier work on the returns to pharmaceutical research and development (R&D) in the US (1980 to 1984), which showed that the returns distributions are highly skewed. It evaluates a more recent cohort of new drug introductions in the US (1988 to 1992) and examines how the returns distribution is emerging for drugs with life cycles concentrated in the 1990s versu...

IMPORTANCE After patients survive an in-hospital cardiac arrest, discussions should occur about prognosis and preferences for future resuscitative efforts. OBJECTIVE To assess whether patients' decisions for do-not-resuscitate (DNR) orders after a successful resuscitation from in-hospital cardiac arrest are aligned with their expected prognosis. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS Within Get ...

Over the last decade the role of genetic data in epidemiological research has expanded considerably. We recently published a case-control study that evaluated the interaction between silica exposure and minor variants in the genes coding for interleukin-1alpha (IL-1alpha), interleukin-1 receptor antagonist (IL-1RA) and tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNFalpha) as risk factors associated with silic...

BACKGROUND Cross-sectional relationships between physical activity and health have been explored extensively, but less is known about how physical activity changes with time in older people. The aim of this study was to assess baseline predictors of how objectively measured physical activity changes with time in older people. METHODS Longitudinal cohort study using data from the Physical Acti...

Animal and human studies suggest a potential link between acid-base status and blood pressure. Contemporary Western diets yield a daily systemic acid load of varying amounts, yet the association with hypertension has never been explored. We prospectively examined the association between the diet-dependent net acid load (also known as the estimated net endogenous acid production) and the risk of...

OBJECTIVES This study was performed to compare the standardized mortality ratios among different small areas and to explore the usefulness of standardized mortality ratios in South Korea. METHODS To calculate the standardized mortality ratio (SMR), we obtained the national deaths certificate data (2004-2006) and national registration population data (2003-2006), and these were provided by the...

STUDY OBJECTIVE To examine the relation between physical activity, calcium intake, and bone mineral content in children. DESIGN Population based, cross sectional study. SETTING Primary schools in Zoetermeer, The Netherlands. PARTICIPANTS Altogether 1359 Dutch boys and girls, aged 7 to 11 years (response rate 88%). MEASUREMENTS Bone mineral content was measured by quantitative roentgen m...

BACKGROUND The health workforce has a dynamically changing nature and the regular documentation of the distribution of health professionals is a persistent policy concern. The aim of the present study was to examine available human medical resources in primary care and identify possible inequalities regarding the distribution of general practitioners in Albania between 2000 and 2004. METHODS ...