INTRODUCTION It has been nearly 20 yr since the first published astronaut mortality analysis. Using astronaut vital data and general population mortality rates, we calculate Standardized Mortality Ratios (SMR) for both total and specific causes of death among astronauts between January 1980 and June 2009 to look for changes in mortality patterns over time. METHODS Astronaut vital data were de...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the validity of using the standardized mortality ratio (SMR) and the W statistic as risk-adjusted measures of hospital mortality to judge ICU performance. DESIGN APACHE (acute physiology and chronic health evaluation) II data were collected prospectively from the surgical ICU (SICU) at a single institution using all adult admissions (n = 6806) over an 8-year period (excl...

BACKGROUND Nasopharyngeal radium irradiation (NRI) was used widely from 1940 through 1970 to treat otitis serosa in children and barotrauma in airmen and submariners. We assessed whether NRI-exposed individuals were at higher risk for cancer-related deaths than were nonexposed individuals. METHODS We conducted a retrospective cohort study of all-cause and cancer-related mortality in 5358 NRI-...

BACKGROUND Severe alpha 1-antitrypsin deficiency (PiZZ) predisposes to morbidity and mortality due to early-onset emphysema and liver disease. The risk of death from other causes, including cardiovascular disease and cancer, has not been well investigated. We aimed to analyze cause-specific mortality in PiZZ individuals compared with the general Swedish population. METHODS Data on 1,561 PiZZ ...

For a cohort of 1189 male German former herbicide and insecticide workers with exposure to polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins and -furans (PCDD/F), we report an extended standardized mortality ratio (SMR) analysis based on a new quantitative exposure index. This index characterizes the cumulative lifetime exposure by integrating the estimated concentration of PCDD/F at every point in time (area ...

A historical cohort study of the printing industry was established after an anecdotal report of a cluster of cases of bladder cancer in a newspaper factory in Manchester. The cohort comprised some 9500 men who were members of one or other of two trade unions (the NGA and NATSOPA) in the Manchester area between 1949 and 1963. During the follow up period (1949-83) 3482 deaths occurred among men b...

OBJECTIVES The study on mortality from cancer among workers of an asbestos plant manufacturing asbestos yarn, cloth, cords, packings, stuffing, brake linings and asbestos-rubber sheets was launched in the 1980s. The present paper discusses the results of further tracing of asbestos workers of the same plant. MATERIALS AND METHODS The study cohort covered 4497 workers employed at the asbestos ...

The present study investigated the anti-diabetic activity and potential mechanism of stigmasterol (SMR), which is a kind of phytosterols derived from the edible soybean oil in vitro and in vivo. SMR displayed a mild GLUT4 translocation activity by 1.44-fold in L6 cells. L6 cells were treated with different concentration of SMR, showing significant effects on the enhancing glucose uptake. SMR ad...

BACKGROUND Various models have been proposed for rapid conversion of the standardized mortality ratio (SMR) to life expectancy using data from developed countries. METHODS We compared two methods for converting the SMR to life expectancy using mortality data from the largest developing country, China. RESULTS The first model, using the Gompertz function, does not provide a good fit to the l...

A common index of disease incidence and mortality is the standardized mortality ratio (SMR). The SMR is a reliable measure of relative risk for large geographical regions such as countries or states, but may be unreliable for small areas such as counties. This paper reviews several empirical Bayes methods for producing smoothed estimates of the SMR as well as the conditional autoregressive proc...