BACKGROUND There are well-established risk factors, such as lower education, for attrition of study participants. Consequently, the representativeness of the cohort in a longitudinal study may deteriorate over time. Death is a common form of attrition in cohort studies of older people. The aim of this paper is to examine the effects of death and other forms of attrition on risk factor prevalenc...

BACKGROUND Social capital research has consistently shown positive associations between generalised trust and health outcomes over 2 decades. Longitudinal studies attempting to test causal relationships further support the theory that trust is an independent predictor of health. However, as the reverse causality hypothesis has yet to be empirically tested, a knowledge gap remains. The aim of th...

Methods A retrospective cohort study at two Canadian centres was performed. The longitudinal trajectories of AJC were described using latent growth curve modeling (GCM). Latent GCM is a novel technique that aims to classify individuals into statistically distinct groups based on individual response patterns so that individuals within a group are more similar than individuals between groups. The...

Background Mitral and tricuspid annular plane systolic excursion (MAPSE and TAPSE respectively) measurements are rapid, sensitive and reproducible means to assess left and right ventricular (LV, RV) function providing relevant prognostic information. Currently, only scarce data exists regarding the prognostic value of M/TAPSE in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM). We hypothesized that M/TAPSE is...

OBJECTIVE To investigate the relationship between short sleep and obesity among Thai adults. DESIGN Both 4-year longitudinal and cross-sectional analyses of a large national cohort. SETTING Thai adults residing nationwide from 2005 to 2009. PARTICIPANTS Cohort members were enrolled as distance learners at Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University (N=87 134 in 2005 and 60 569 at 2009 follow-u...

OBJECTIVE The aim of the present study was to test a hypothesis that a history of having a macrosomic infant (≥ 4000 g) is associated with the risk of diabetes. METHODS Data on the Japan Public Health Center-based Prospective diabetes cohort were analyzed, which is a population-based cohort study on diabetes. The survey of diabetes was performed at baseline and at the 5-year follow-up. A hist...

Sibling and twin study designs provide control for confounding factors that are typically unmeasured in traditional cohort studies. Using nationally representative data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health collected at 3 visits during 1994-2002, the authors evaluated the longitudinal association between birth weight and later obesity in a traditional cohort study (n = 13,76...

The aim of this study was to investigate if children's early responsiveness toward social partners is developmentally related to their growing concept of self, as reflected in their mirror self-recognition (MSR) and delayed self-recognition (DSR). Thus, a longitudinal study assessed infants' responsiveness (e.g., smiling, gaze) toward social partners during the still-face (SF) task and a social...

Commentary on: Poor airway function in early infancy and lung function by age 22 years: a non-selective longitudinal cohort study. Stern and co-authors, in this issue of the Lancet