Background Estimates of excess deaths provide critical intelligence on the impact of population health threats including seasonal respiratory infections, pandemics and environmental hazards. Timely estimates of excess deaths can inform the response to COVID-19. However, access to timely mortality data is challenging due to the time interval between the death occurring and the date the death is registered

The limitations of the two-way fixed effects for the impact evaluation of interventions that occur at different times for each group have meant that ‘staggered interventions’ have been highlighted in recent years in the econometric literature and, more recently, in epidemiology. Although many alternative strategies (such as staggered difference-in-differences) have been proposed, the focus has predominantly

BACKGROUND Examining trajectories of undernutrition and overnutrition separately limits understanding of the double burden of malnutrition. We investigated transitions between normal, stunting, overweight and concurrent stunting and overweight (CSO) and associations with sociodemographic factors in children and adolescents. METHODS We used data from the Young Lives cohort in India, Peru and Vietnam

We outline a geometric perspective on causal inference in cohort studies that can help epidemiologists understand the role of standardization in controlling for confounding. For simplicity, we focus on a binary exposure X, a binary outcome D, and a binary confounder C that is not causally affected by X. Rothman diagrams plot the risk of disease in the unexposed on the x-axis and the risk in the exposed

Measurement error and information bias are ubiquitous in epidemiology, yet directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) are infrequently used to represent them, in contrast with confounding and selection bias. This represents a missed opportunity to leverage the full utility of DAGs to depict associations between the variables we actually analyse in practice: empirically measured variables, which are necessarily

BACKGROUND Previous studies with large data have been widely reported that exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) is associated with all-cause mortality; however, most of these studies adopted ecological time-series designs or have included limited study areas or individuals residing in well-monitored urban areas. However, nationwide cohort studies including cause-specific mortalities with different

BACKGROUND Previous studies have indicated that standing may be beneficially associated with surrogate metabolic markers, whereas more time spent sitting has an adverse association. Studies assessing the dose-response associations of standing, sitting and composite stationary behaviour time with cardiovascular disease (CVD) and orthostatic circulatory disease are scarce and show an unclear picture

BACKGROUND Childhood obesity is a major public health concern, and the global rate is rising. Rapid infant weight gain is a risk factor for later overweight. Studies have linked prenatal ambient temperature exposure to fetal growth, and preliminary evidence suggests postnatal exposure may be associated with infant weight gain. METHODS Using a population-based historical cohort study including 1 100

INTRODUCTION Despite poor agreement, neighbourhood income is used as a proxy for household income, due to a lack of data availability. We quantified misclassification between household and neighbourhood income and demonstrate quantitative bias analysis (QBA) in scenarios where only neighbourhood income is available in assessing income inequalities on colorectal cancer mortality. METHODS This was a

Background Colorectal cancer remains a major global public health challenge. Its incidence is shaped by a complex interplay of screening programmes and age, period and cohort factors. Methods We introduce a novel Age-Period-Cohort-Screening (APCS) model to analyse trends in colorectal cancer incidence in Taiwan from 2000 to 2019. Results In 2010, the incidence of colorectal cancer in Taiwan increased

BACKGROUND Monitoring the incidence of chronic health conditions (CHCs) in childhood in England, using administrative data to derive numerators and denominators, is challenged by unmeasured migration. We used open and closed birth cohort designs to estimate the cumulative incidence of CHCs to age 16 years. METHODS In closed cohorts, we identified all births in Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) from

BACKGROUND Higher body mass index (BMI) is associated with higher incidence of cardiovascular and some non-cardiovascular diseases (CVDs/non-CVDs). However, uncertainty remains about its associations with mortality, particularly at lower BMI levels. METHODS The prospective China Kadoorie Biobank recruited >512 000 adults aged 30-79 years in 2004-08 and genotyped a random subset of 76 000 participants

BACKGROUND The healthy worker effect may distort the association between exposure and health effects in workers. However, few studies have investigated both the healthy worker hire and survival effects simultaneously, and they are limited to mortality studies in male workers. METHODS We utilized a data set comprising South Korean diagnostic medical radiation workers registered in the National Dose

BACKGROUND Older adults in the USA have worse health and wider socioeconomic inequalities in health compared with those in Britain. Less is known about how health in the two countries compares in mid-life, a time of emerging health decline, including inequalities in health. METHODS We compare measures of current regular smoking status, obesity, self-rated health, cholesterol, blood pressure and glycated

BACKGROUND COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness (VE) studies leveraging systematic surveillance in sub-Saharan Africa are limited. We assessed the effectiveness of two vaccines (Pfizer BNT162b2 and Johnson & Johnson Ad26.COV2.S) against SARS-CoV-2-associated hospitalization in South African adults aged ≥18 years. METHODS We conducted a test-negative case-control study using pneumonia surveillance data in

BACKGROUND The impact of migration on HIV risk among non-migrating household members is poorly understood. We measured HIV incidence among non-migrants living in households with and without migrants in Uganda. METHODS We used four survey rounds of data collected from July 2011 to May 2018 from non-migrant participants aged 15-49 years in the Rakai Community Cohort Study. Non-migrants were individuals

BACKGROUND Despite persistent concerns about only children's disadvantage relative to individuals with siblings, existing health-related evidence is inconsistent. Recent evidence from Nordic countries about only children having poorer health outcomes may not apply elsewhere because selection processes differ across contexts. We investigate the midlife health of only children in the UK where one-child

BACKGROUND Autoimmune diseases disproportionately impact women and female-specific aspects of reproduction are thought to play a role. We investigated the time-varying association between pregnancy complications and new-onset autoimmune disease in females during the reproductive and midlife years. METHODS We conducted a population-based cohort study of 1 704 553 singleton births to 1 072 445 females

MOTIVATION The Peter Clark (PC) algorithm is a popular causal discovery method to learn causal graphs in a data-driven way. Until recently, existing PC algorithm implementations in R had important limitations regarding missing values, temporal structure or mixed measurement scales (categorical/continuous), which are all common features of cohort data. The new R packages presented here, micd and tpc

BACKGROUND Published analyses of prostate cancer nested case-control and survival data in the Alpha-Tocopherol, Beta-Carotene Cancer Prevention (ATBC) Study cohort suggested that men with higher baseline vitamin D [25(OH)D] concentrations have both (i) increased prostate cancer risk and (ii) decreased prostate cancer-specific fatality. METHODS To investigate possible factors responsible for a spurious

BACKGROUND Heated tobacco products (HTPs) have emerged as alternatives to conventional cigarettes. However, their health effects remain largely unknown. This study aimed to prospectively explore the association between the use of cigarettes and HTPs and the risk of hypertension. METHODS This cohort study analysed data from 30 152 workers (82.0% men, mean age 42.9 ± 11.0 years) who were initially free

Background Disease latency is defined as the time from disease initiation to disease diagnosis. Disease latency bias (DLB) can arise in epidemiological studies that examine latent outcomes, since the exact timing of the disease inception is unknown and might occur before exposure initiation, potentially leading to bias. Although DLB can affect epidemiological studies that examine different types of

Background The impact of societal factors on the occurrence of head and neck cancers (HNCs) remains understudied, especially in the Nordic countries. Methods To quantify the association between socio-economic status (SES) and the occurrence of HNCs, this cohort study uses data from the Nordic Occupational Cancer project that combine occupational and cancer registry data from 1961 to 2005 of 14.9 million

Background Epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) is the eighth most common cancer in women, with poor survival outcomes. Observational evidence suggests that nitrogen-based bisphosphonate (NBB) use may be associated with reduced risk of EOC, particularly the endometrioid and serous histotypes; however, confounding by indication is a concern. An alternative approach to investigate the chemo-preventive potential

Background Biomass burning (BB) is a major source of air pollution and particulate matter (PM) in Southeast Asia. However, the health effects of PM smaller than 10 µm (PM10) originating from BB may differ from those of other sources. This study aimed to estimate the short-term association of PM10 from BB with respiratory and cardiovascular hospital admissions in Peninsular Malaysia, a region often

Background The carcinogenicity of air pollution and its impact on the risk of lung cancer is well known; however, there are still knowledge gaps and mixed results for other sites of cancer. Methods The current study aimed to evaluate the associations between ambient air pollution [fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and nitrogen oxides (NOx)] and cancer incidence. Exposure assessment was based on historical

Background Epstein–Barr virus (EBV) is a major cause of nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) and measurement of different EBV antibodies in blood may improve early detection of NPC. Prospective studies can help assess the roles of different EBV antibodies in predicting NPC risk over time. Methods A case-cohort study within the prospective China Kadoorie Biobank of 512 715 adults from 10 (including two NPC

Background Empirical evaluation of inverse probability weighting (IPW) for self-selection bias correction is inaccessible without the full source population. We aimed to: (i) investigate how self-selection biases frequency and association measures and (ii) assess self-selection bias correction using IPW in a cohort with register linkage. Methods The source population included 17 936 individuals invited

Background This study aimed to estimate population-level and state-level lead-attributable mortality burdens stratified by socioeconomic status (SES) class in the USA. Methods Based on the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), we constructed individual-level SES scores from income, employment, education and insurance data. We assessed the association between the blood lead levels

This paper presents causal loop diagrams (CLDs) as tools for studying complex public health problems like health inequality. These problems often involve feedback loops—a characteristic of complex systems not fully integrated into mainstream epidemiology. CLDs are conceptual models that visualize connections between system variables. They are commonly developed through literature reviews or participatory

Background Our aim was to evaluate the prevalence, mortality, regional and sex distribution of neural tube defects (NTDs) in Finland. Methods Data for this population-based study were collected from 1987 to 2018 from the national health and social welfare registers. Results There were in total 1634 cases of NTDs, of which 511 were live births, 72 pregnancies ended in stillbirth and 1051 were terminations

Background Perceived discrimination in health care settings can have adverse consequences on mental health in minority groups. However, the association between perceived discrimination and mental health is prone to unmeasured confounding. The study aims to quantitatively evaluate the influence of unmeasured confounding in this association, using g-estimation. Methods In a predominantly African American

BACKGROUND Homicide is the leading cause of death among young people in Latin America, one of the world's most violent regions. Poverty is widely considered a key cause of violence, but theories suggest different effects of poverty, depending on when it is experienced in the life-course. Longitudinal studies of violence are scarce in Latin America, and very few prospective data are available worldwide

BACKGROUND The role of children and staff in SARS-CoV-2 transmission outside and within households is still not fully understood when large numbers are in regular, frequent contact in schools. METHODS We used the self-controlled case-series method during the alpha- and delta-dominant periods to explore the incidence of infection in periods around a household member infection, relative to periods without