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...

Several epidemiological studies of workers exposed to cadmium indicate an increased risk of lung and prostatic cancer. The increase is statistically significant in some of the studies but the SMR is greater than 100 in almost all. A cohort study of the mortality among 522 Swedish workers exposed to cadmium for at least one year in a nickel-cadmium battery plant support the earlier findings. The...

The nature of Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) disks makes log structured file systems suitable for such disks. Nilfs2 is a promising log structured file system and is available in the Linux kernel source as an experimental file system. Nilfs2 is actively maintained and stable, providing a good platform for functional and performance evaluation of SMR disks. The Linux Test Project (LTP) test-s...

OBJECTIVES To examine the cancer risk of shoe manufacturing workers and evaluate whether the risk was associated with exposure to leather dust and solvents. METHODS Data from two historical cohort studies of shoe workers were expanded and analysed in parallel. A total of 4215 shoemakers from England contributing 103 726 person-years at risk and 2008 shoemakers from Florence, Italy, contributi...