BACKGROUND About one of every 5 athletes who participated in the 1996 Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta had a past history of asthma, had symptoms that suggested asthma, or took asthma medications. No previous study has determined the prevalence of asthma in all US athletes who participated in an Olympic Winter Games. OBJECTIVES We sought to determine how many US athletes who participated in th...

BACKGROUND Oman is heading towards heavy industrialisation with rapid establishment of new industrial parks. One of these, the Sohar Industrial Zone (SIZ) started to operate in 2006 and includes many industries that potentially affect local air quality and the health status of its surrounding residents. The study aim was to assess the health effects in a population of ≥ 20 years old, living in ...

We model monthly disease counts on an age-time grid using the two-dimensional varying-coefficient Poisson regression. Since the marginal profile of counts shows a very strong and varying annual cycle, sine and cosine regressors model periodicity, but their coefficients are allowed to vary smoothly over the age and time plane. The coefficient surfaces are estimated using a relatively large tenso...

Asthma is the most common respiratory disorder occurring with pregnancy. The severity of the disease may vary during the pregnancy. With appropriate management good control of asthma can be maintained throughout pregnancy and result in delivery of a normal infant. Correspondence: Dr M Greenblatt, PO Box 84227, Greenside 2034. Tel 011-726-6367, fax 011-726-2717, email [email protected] Mak...

Oxidative stress caused by reactive species, including reactive oxygen species, reactive nitrogen species, and unbound, adventitious metal ions (e.g., iron [Fe] and copper [Cu]), is an underlying cause of various neurodegenerative diseases. These reactive species are an inevitable by-product of cellular respiration or other metabolic processes that may cause the oxidation of lipids, nucleic aci...