BACKGROUND Socioeconomic status could affect the demand for hospital care. The aim of the present study was to assess the role of age, socioeconomic status and comorbidity on acute hospital admissions among elderly. METHODS We retrospectively examined the discharge abstracts data of acute care hospital admissions of residents in Rome aged 75 or more years in the period 1997-2000. We used the ...

BACKGROUND Vitamin D has been suggested to play a protective role against several cancers, including breast cancer. PATIENTS AND METHODS We used data from a case-control study conducted in Italy from 1991 to 1994 to study the relation between dietary intake of vitamin D and breast cancer risk. Subjects were 2569 women with incident, histologically confirmed breast cancer and 2588 hospital con...

Epidemiologic evidence indicates that vitamin D is inversely associated with risk of colon or rectal cancer or both. Using data from a case-control study conducted in Italy between 1992 and 1996, we examined the relation between dietary intake of vitamin D and colon and rectal cancer risk. The study population comprised patients with incident colon cancer (n = 1,225) or rectal cancer (n = 728) ...

BACKGROUND This study aimed to validate the Korean Genome Epidemiology Study (KoGES) risk score to predict the 4-year risk of hypertension (HT) in a large nationwide sample, and compare its discrimination and calibration with the Framingham and blood pressure (BP)-only models. METHODSANDRESULTS This study analyzed 69,918 subjects without HT at baseline from the National Sample Cohort in the N...

OBJECTIVE Italian Road Law limits driving while undergoing treatment with certain kinds of medication. Here, we report the results of a test, run as a smartphone application (app), assessing auditory and visual reflexes in a sample of 300 drivers. The scope of the test is to provide both the police force and medication-taking drivers with a tool that can evaluate the individual's capacity to dr...

adjusting or controlling for a variable: Assessing the effect of one variable while accounting for the effect of another (confounding) variable. Adjustment for the other variable can be carried out by stratifying the analysis (especially if the variable is categorical) or by statistically estimating the relationship between the variable and the outcome and then subtracting out that effect to st...

AIM To validate a previously developed prediction model for vaginal birth after cesarean (VBAC) using a Japanese cohort. METHODS We performed a cohort study of all term pregnant women with a vertex position, singleton gestation, and one prior low transverse cesarean delivery attempting a trial of labor between April 1985 and March 2010. Variables necessary for the prediction of successful VBA...

Under- and overreporting of energy intake in relation to body mass index (BMI, kg/m2) were examined by using 24-hour urinary sodium and potassium as biomarkers. The data were obtained from 2,124 men and 1,998 women aged 25-74 years who participated in the 1981-1984 Belgian Interuniversity Research on Nutrition and Health study conducted in Belgium. The ratios of dietary intake to urinary excret...

OBJECTIVE The long-term health consequences of diets used for weight control are not established. We have evaluated the association of the frequently recommended low carbohydrate diets - usually characterized by concomitant increase in protein intake - with long-term mortality. DESIGN The Women's Lifestyle and Health cohort study initiated in Sweden during 1991-1992, with a 12-year almost com...

Estimated transmitting abilities for milk of 258,201 Holstein heifers from first lactations were regressed on sire's milk proof, maternal grandsire's milk proof, and either dam's estimated transmitting ability from milk in first lactation or dams's estimated transmitting ability from milk of all lactations. Effects of year of birth of dam, dam's estimated transmitting ability for milk from firs...