AIMS Chronic heart failure (HF) is a common condition with a poor prognosis. As delayed diagnosis and treatment of HF patients in primary care can be detrimental, risk-stratified waiting lists for echocardiography might optimize resource utilization. We investigated whether a prognostic threshold level of the cardiac peptide, NT-proBNP, could be identified. METHODS AND RESULTS From 2003-2005,...

The onset of essential hypertension early in life is indicated by the high tracking of blood pressure during adolescence; intervention in adults with mild hypertension has been found successful. How, then, can high blood pressure levels in children be modified to prevent early hypertensive cardiovascular disease in adulthood? In an entire biracial town (population 9000) we surveyed 1604 (89%) o...

Accidental drug overdose is a substantial cause of mortality for drug users. Neighborhood-level factors, such as income distribution, may be important determinants of overdose death independent of individual-level factors. We used data from the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner to identify all cases of accidental deaths in New York City (NYC) in 1996 and individual-level covariates. We used ...

Placental infarction is frequently observed in low birth weight children. To evaluate whether low birth weight in healthy term neonates is associated with foetal inherited prothrombotic risk factors this retrospective study was conducted. Outcome measures were "birth weight in the lowest quartile" and "birth weight in the lowest decile" in singletons with a gestational age of > or =37 weeks. Th...

In this study we investigate the minimum wage (MW) effects for a German sub-construction sector where the MW bites extraordinary hard by international standards. Within a quasiexperiment we estimate the Quantile Treatment Effects of the MW on the conditional and unconditional distribution of earnings. For Eastern Germany, the results indicate significant real (nominal) wage increases that rippl...

High intake of added sugars is associated with excess energy intake and poorer diet quality. The objective of this cross-sectional study (n = 16,806) was to estimate usual intakes and the primary food sources of added sugars across the range of intakes (i.e., deciles) among U.S. children (2-8 years), adolescents and teens (9-18 years), and adults (≥19 years) using the National Health and Nutrit...

this paper attempts to employ microeconomics methodology to answer the following questions: for which group of society the consumption pattern which is used as a basis to calculate consumer price index (cpi) and inflation rate, stands for is there any difference between inflation rate of poor and rich households in iran? calculations done in this paper show that the consumption pattern which be...

Genetic variation in the Y chromosome has significant effects on male blood pressure in experimental animals, but the effects in humans are unknown. We examined the relationship between blood pressure and a polymorphic HINdIII restriction site in the nonrecombining region of the Y chromosome in 409 randomly selected men from the general population. Carefully standardized measures of systolic an...

Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) are compounds that do not occur in nature but have been widely used since World War II and persist indefinitely in the environment. They are present in the serum of Americans with median levels of 4 ng/mL and 21 ng/mL, respectively. PFOA has been positively associated with cholesterol in several studies of workers. A cross-secti...

This paper addresses how institutional selectivity influences college preferences and enrollment decisions of Texas seniors in the presence of a putatively race-neutral admissions policy—the top 10% law. We analyze a representative survey of Texas high school seniors as of spring, 2002, who were re-interviewed one year later to evaluate differences in selectivity of college preferences and enro...