IJEblog

Matthew C Lohman, Anwar T Merchant and Catherine Y Chi The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is an initiative that provides food benefits to low-income Americans to help them afford groceries. Claims that use of SNAP contributes to bad health outcomes appear often in research and the media. Some studies have found that people who … Continue reading Does using SNAP harm cognitive he…

Iñaki Permanyer, Jordi Gumà-Lao, Sergi Trias-Llimós and Aïda Solé-Auró Multimorbidity – where someone has two or more chronic health conditions at the same time – is a growing challenge facing health care systems, particularly in countries with low mortality rates. Although much is known about multimorbidity, important questions remain unanswered. Is it occurring more often … Continue reading Are…

Michael Plank How many people died because of the COVID-19 pandemic in New Zealand? It sounds like a simple question, but the answer depends on more than just counting reported COVID-19 deaths. In our recent study, published in the International Journal of Epidemiology, we looked at a key statistic called excess mortality – the number … Continue reading Counting the true toll of the COVID-19 pand…

Yi Ying Ong, Nicholas Beng Hui Ng and Yung Seng Lee Imagine two babies born at full term. Baby A had a normal growth rate in the womb but is born naturally small, while Baby B is born small after their growth in the womb slowed down. Baby B’s “fetal growth deceleration” may have been … Continue reading Is rapid growth after birth linked to improved intelligence in children who had poor fetal grow…

Anita van Zwieten, Fiona M Blyth, Germaine Wong and Saman Khalatbari-Soltani Epidemiologists are generally well equipped to design and conduct studies that minimise various types of bias, so as to obtain the most accurate estimates possible and therefore high-quality evidence. In observational studies, some types of bias, like confounding, have received a lot of attention, … Continue reading Over…

Iñaki Permanyer and Júlia Almeida Calazans Policymakers and scholars are increasingly interested in monitoring and curbing health inequalities. Much is known about the main causes of death and how mortality has been shifting from most deaths around the world being caused by communicable diseases towards most being due to non-communicable causes. However, less is known … Continue reading Proposing…

Ursula Gazeley According to the most recent data from the World Health Organization, the lifetime risk of maternal death for a girl in Chad is a staggering 1 in 15, compared with 1 in 43,000 in Norway. This means that a girl in Chad has an almost 3000 times greater risk of dying from a … Continue reading Why we need a new measure of maternal health: the “lifetime risk of maternal near miss”

Jakob Tarp, Knut Eirik Dalene and Ulf Ekelund As will be obvious to anyone on a bus or train or waiting for coffee, access to screen-based media has been revolutionised over the past two decades. In 2020, there were more than six billion smartphone users worldwide and almost global penetration. Yet, our understanding of how … Continue reading Have smartphones and ubiquitous internet access affect…

Yacong Bo and Xiang Qian Lao Regular exercise is recognised as providing significant lifestyle-related protection against non-communicable diseases. It can also reduce the likelihood of cardiovascular disease, cancer and premature death. By contrast, long-term exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) can increase the likelihood of respiratory and cardiovascular disease and certain cancers, lea…

Shuyi Qiu and John S Ji Many people around the world are still using biomass as a fuel for cooking and heating. Inefficient combustion of solid fuels is the primary cause of indoor household air pollution, estimated to be responsible for 4.3 million premature deaths in 2012 (7.7% of total mortality). The World Health Organization’s … Continue reading Could biomass fuel use perpetuate the poverty …

Leah Abrams In the United States, rural residents do not live as long as their urban counterparts. This disparity has been widening for decades. Around 1970, urban life expectancy was 70.9 years, compared with 70.5 in rural areas, but by 2005–2009, the difference was greater (78.8 versus 76.8 years). In our research recently published in … Continue reading How has cardiovascular disease contribut…

How individual and neighbourhood socioeconomic disadvantages jointly affect health-related behaviour Yinjie Zhu In our study recently published in the IJE, we found that socioeconomically disadvantaged individuals were more likely to have worse health-related lifestyle behaviour than their neighbours, even if they lived in neighbourhoods with little overall socioeconomic disadvantage. We also obs…

Jingyuan Xiao, Zeyan Liew and Jiong Li Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) comprises a heterogeneous group of impaired neurodevelopmental conditions. The aetiology of ASD is complex and largely unclear, with some recent evidence suggesting the possibility of transmission of risk across multiple generations. Our study, recently published in the International Journal of Epidemiology, evaluated the assoc…

Fanny Janssen, Sergi Trias-Llimós and Anton Kunst Smoking, alcohol misuse and behaviours that result in obesity (such as an unhealthy diet and insufficient physical activity) have strong negative effects on individual health. Because these health behaviours are very common among people in Europe, smoking, alcohol and obesity also largely influence mortality rates and life expectancy … Continue re…

Kristina Thompson We are in the midst of a global recession as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and attendant lockdown measures. Both the pandemic and the lockdown have each, on their own, worsened health outcomes. This fact has been relatively well covered by the media. What is missing from this discussion is that the … Continue reading What the current economic recession means for long-term he…

Yi Ying Ong, Yung Seng Lee and Navin Michael Fetal undernutrition followed by abundant food after birth might be a recipe for disaster — it is linked to increased risk of obesity and cardiometabolic diseases later in life. The Dutch famine birth cohort study is a tragic “natural experiment” that exemplified this phenomenon. It observed … Continue reading Is mismatch between poor fetal growth and …

Yuxian Ma, Olesya Ajnakina, Andrew Steptoe and Dorina Cadar Dementia is a major health challenge that could steal away the opportunity for successful ageing of the population. A priority is to identify lifestyle factors that may reduce the risk of dementia, or even prevent it. The modifiable risk factors for vascular diseases — such as … Continue reading Increased dementia risk for those who are …

Mette Lise Lousdal and Henrik Støvring While organised mammography screening programs were being gradually introduced across various countries, researchers could study the impact of screening on breast cancer mortality by comparing mortality in areas with and without screening. Now that screening has been fully implemented in most Western countries, researchers can only compare women who … Contin…

Stephen Leeder The first preliminary (Phase 1) trial in humans of a coronavirus vaccine in the US is a good moment for reflection on the immunology of this illness. We need to be cautious. It is not the virus that leads to interstitial lung disease and death. It is our immunological response, the “cytokine storm”, … Continue reading Herd immunity and the coronavirus

The Council of the International Epidemiological Association, its affiliate bodies and members have viewed with concern the rapidly evolving situation with the novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Since the onset of the outbreak in December 2019, this disease has affected 162 countries and territories (as of 17/03/2020) with over 184,000 people affected and 7,000 deaths. With … Continue reading…