MODELING RETIREE HEALTH COSTS: This Issue Brief examines the uncertainty of health care expenses in retirement by using a Monte Carlo simulation model to estimate the amount of savings needed to cover health insurance premiums and out-of-pocket health care expenses. This type of simulation is able to account for the uncertainty related to individual mortality and rates of return, and computes t...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Intravoxel incoherent motion can simultaneously measure diffusion and perfusion characteristics. Our aim was to determine whether the perfusion and diffusion parameters derived from intravoxel incoherent motion could act as imaging biomarkers for distinguishing recurrent tumor from treatment effect in patients with glioblastoma. MATERIALS AND METHODS Fifty-one patients ...

RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS—This was a population-based cohort study of 3,705 infants of type 1 diabetic mothers (1,876 boys), with a gestational age of 28–43 weeks, born in Sweden between 1998 and 2007. BW and BL were retrieved from the Medical Birth Registry and expressed as SD scores (SDS). Ponderal index (PI) was calculated as BW in g/length in cm. A BW.90th and a PI,90th percentile was def...

BACKGROUND In 2009, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is publicly reporting hospital-level risk-standardized 30-day mortality and readmission rates after acute myocardial infarction (AMI) and heart failure (HF). We provide patterns of hospital performance, based on these measures. METHODS AND RESULTS We calculated the 30-day mortality and readmission rates for all Medicare fee-for-...

In 1998 we published the results of a study suggesting an association between breast cancer and perchloroethylene (PCE; also called tetrachloroethylene) exposure from public drinking water. The present case-control study was undertaken to evaluate this association further. The cases were composed of female residents of eight towns in the Cape Cod region of Massachusetts who had been diagnosed w...

Male preponderance in autistic behavioral impairment has been explained in terms of a hypothetical protective effect of female sex, yet little research has tested this hypothesis empirically. If females are protected, they should require greater etiologic load to manifest the same degree of impairment as males. The objective of this analysis was to examine whether greater familial etiologic loa...

whilst there seem to be available data on blood pressure profiles of south african children, especially in urban areas, few data exist on rural children. the aims of this study were to determine the blood pressure profiles of rural south african children residing in thohoyandou; and to examine the relationship between body mass index and blood pressure among the children.the study involved 296 ...

PURPOSE Overweight can be defined by the body mass index (BMI) and is likely associated with an increased cardiovascular disease risk. However, waist circumference (WC), a central adiposity index, may be a better indicator of cardiovascular disease risk. Studies comparing the effects of BMI and WC on cardiovascular risk factors, such as high blood pressure (BP), are rare in adolescents. METHO...

Obesity is an established risk factor for non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (NIDDM). Anthropometric measures of overall and central obesity as predictors of NIDDM risk have not been as well studied, especially in women. Among 43,581 women enrolled in the Nurses' Health Study who in 1986 provided waist, hip, and weight information and who were initially free from diabetes and other major c...

BACKGROUND High, normal and poor responders are usually defined by reference to subjectively selected estradiol E2 levels at days 4-6 and the day of hCG administration (d-hCG). The purpose of this study was to use E2 percentile curves from day 5 until d-hCG to determine high, normal and poor responders, and to predict IVF outcome. METHODS In this retrospective study, 762 patients underwent 90...