Correlates of use of health care services by children and adolescents from 11 European countries

Objective: To examine the association between use of health care services and health status, sociodemographic, and health care system characteristics in children and adolescents from 11 European countries. Research Design: Cross-sectional surveys in representative samples included using phone or school-based sampling. Subjects: Children and...

Stage line diagram: An age-conditional reference diagram for tracking development

This paper presents a method for calculating stage line diagrams, a novel type of reference diagram useful for tracking developmental processes over time. Potential fields of applications include: dentistry (tooth eruption), oncology (tumor grading, cancer staging), virology (HIV infection and disease staging), psychology (stages of cognitive...

Improved accuracy when screening for human growth disorders by likelihood ratios

The standard deviation score (SDS) is a powerful tool for screening for growth-related problems. However, referral rules of the type 'if SDS(Y)<d, then refer' (for some constant d) are not optimal for answering the question: 'Does this child with measurement Y belong to the reference or to the diseased population?'. If the growth standard for...

Height, weight, weight change, and ovarian cancer risk in the Netherlands Cohort Study on Diet and Cancer

Although many studies have been conducted to investigate the relation between anthropometry and the risk of ovarian cancer, their results have been inconsistent. The Netherlands Cohort Study on Diet and Cancer was initiated in 1986. A self-administered questionnaire on dietary habits and other risk factors for cancer was completed by 62,573...

High physical work load and low job satisfaction increase the risk of sickness absence due to low back pain: Results of a prospective cohort study

Objective: To determine whether physical and psychosocial load at work influence sickness absence due to low back pain. Methods: The research was a part of the study on musculoskeletal disorders, absenteeism, stress, and health (SMASH), a 3 year prospective cohort study on risk factors for musculoskeletal disorders. Workers from 21 companies...

Vegetable and fruit consumption and risks of colon and rectal cancer in a prospective cohort study

The relation between vegetable and fruit consumption and colorectal cancer risk was comprehensively assessed in the Netherlands Cohort Study on Diet and Cancer using a validated 150-item food frequency questionnaire. After 6.3 years of follow-up (1986-1992), over 1,000 incident cases of colorectal cancer were registered. Using case-cohort...

Apolipoprotein E phenotype is not related to late-life depression in a population-based sample

Apolipoprotein E (ApoE) allele frequencies were examined in a population-based sample (n = 475; age range 65-84 years; Amsterdam Study of the Elderly). The relation of ApoE ε4 with dementia and with various types of late-life depression was studied. Depression was measured with the Geriatric Mental State schedule. Dementia was diagnosed by DSM...

Gender-related association between the -93T →Gg/D9N haplotype of the lipoprotein lipase gene and elevated lipid levels in familial combined hyperlipidemia

Familial combined hyperlipidemia (FCHL) is a frequent cause of premature coronary artery disease. Affected family members are characterized by different combinations of elevated cholesterol and/or triglyceride levels. A reduction in lipoprotein lipase (LPL) activity has been observed in a subgroup of FCHL patients. Recently, we have demonstrated...

Alcohol and breast cancer in women: A pooled analysis of cohort studies

Objective. - To assess the risk of invasive breast cancer associated with total and beverage-specific alcohol consumption and to evaluate whether dietary and nondietary factors modify the association. Data Sources. - We included in these analyses 6 prospective studies that had at least 200 incident breast cancer cases, assessed long-term intake...

The optimum decision rules for the oddity task

This paper presents the optimum decision rule for an m-interval oddity task in which m-1 intervals contain the same signal and one is different or odd. The optimum decision rule depends on the degree of correlation among observations. The present approach unifies the different strategies that occur with "roved" or "fixed" experiments (Macmillan ...

An amino acid polymorphism in histidine-rich glycoprotein (HRG) explains 59% of the variance in plasma HRG levels

A pedigree-based maximum likelihood method developed by Lange et al. (12) was used to study the contribution of a newly defined di-allelic polymorphism in histidine-rich glycoprotein (HRG) to the plasma levels of HRG. In four families (n = 99) and 20 volunteers we found a heritability of 70%, an age effect of 3% and an effect of individual...