Preventive medicine
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Preventive medicine · Dec 2023
Cumulative burden and trajectories of body mass index and blood pressure from childhood and carotid intima-media thickness in young adulthood.
There are significant gaps in understanding of the association between levels and rate of change of body mass index (BMI) and blood pressure (BP) at different ages during childhood and carotid intima-media thickness (CIMT) in adulthood. We investigated the association between trajectories of BMI and BP from childhood to adulthood and adult CIMT among Iranian participants in the Tehran Lipid and Glucose Study (TLGS) cohort. A total of 1334 participants (692 men), from the TLGS cohort (1999-2018) with repeated measurements of BMI and BP (2-6 times) from childhood (3-18 years) to young adulthood (20-40 years) were selected. ⋯ Further, levels of BMI (ORs: 1.23 to 1.29) and DBP (ORs: 1.25 to 1.33) during the ages of 13-18 and 11-17 years, respectively, were significantly associated with CIMT in adulthood (all P < 0.05). The cumulative burden of BMI and DBP was associated with CIMT in adulthood. Adolescence is a crucial period for high CIMT, which has implications for early prevention of atherosclerosis.
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Understanding polysubstance use among US sexual minority adults is important to serve as a population-level baseline to promote health equity around substance use prevention and public health strategies. This study quantifies the number of substances used by sexual identity among US adults. ⋯ Tailored substance use prevention and public health strategies specializing in sexual minority populations are warranted.
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Preventive medicine · Dec 2023
The importance of using disease causal models in studies of preventive interventions: Learning from preeclampsia research.
Interventions aimed at preventing disease are commonly studied as strategies of primary or secondary prevention. Unfortunately, this dichotomy can be misleading, and studies might unknowingly exclude people at high risk of the disease that could benefit from the intervention. Here I use the example of aspirin for prevention of preeclampsia to illustrate this problem. ⋯ Explicitly illustrating disease causal models helps to identify those individuals that are most likely to benefit from risk reduction, regardless of whether they were previously afflicted by the disease. This is beneficial when designing studies and when implementing preventive interventions.
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Preventive medicine · Dec 2023
Associations of pedometer-measured ambulatory activity with incidence of atherosclerotic cardiovascular diseases: Strong heart family study.
Coronary heart disease has several risk factors that require a multifactorial community intervention approach in prevention efforts. Prevalence of coronary heart disease and its risk factors have been disproportionately high among American Indians. The objective of this study is to evaluate the impact of ambulatory activity levels on the development of coronary heart disease in this population. ⋯ Higher daily step count (over 7282 steps per day) is significantly associated with lower incidence of coronary heart disease among American Indian participants of the Strong Heart Family Study in a 20-year follow-up period.
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Preventive medicine · Dec 2023
Opioid toxicity deaths in Black persons who experienced provincial incarceration in Ontario, Canada 2015-2020: A population-based study.
In the context of mass incarceration and the opioid toxicity crisis in North America, there is a lack of data on the burden of opioid toxicity deaths in Black persons who experience incarceration. We aimed to describe absolute and relative opioid toxicity mortality for Black persons who experienced incarceration in Ontario, Canada between 2015 and 2020. ⋯ We identified a large, inequitable burden of opioid toxicity death for Black persons who experience incarceration in Ontario, Canada. Work is needed to support access to culturally appropriate prevention and treatment in custody and post-release for persons who are Black, and to prevent incarceration and improve determinants of health.