Lyme disease, caused by the bite of a deer tick infected with Borrelia burdorferi, has been increasing in distribution and prevalence annually throughout Maine. Worker’s compensation claims for Lyme disease have also been increasing steadily since the initial claim made in 1999. This research reviewed Maine worker’s compensation claims for Lyme disease from 1999-2011 to determine trends in state distribution and occupation type. Descriptive statistics were calculated to analyze different distributions of occupational Lyme disease. Occupations with the highest distribution of Lyme disease claims were those requiring workers to spend the majority of their time outdoors. A clear trend of claim distribution was seen, which mirrored that of the State of Maine Lyme disease case surveillance data. With the apparent increase in worker’s compensation claims due to Lyme disease and an increased geographic distribution annually, additional prevention and education efforts should be focused toward the higher risk occupations.

No description available.

The purpose of the present study was to utilize a statewide, representative sample of students in grades 6-8 in Tennessee to determine the co-occurrence of health risk behaviors such as smoking, substance use and eating disorders, among adolescents by determining the impact gender, age, race, and geographic region have on the association of these behaviors with the prevalence of adolescent obesity. We also explored the role that district, school, and class level health risk behavior variables play in adolescent obesity. Among adolescent females in the sample, 17.25% were obese, whereas 27.27% of males were obese. Stratified Hierarchical Logistic Regression Analysis demonstrated that several variables such as having ever tried smoking, having a weight misperception, and eating disorder, watching TV for more than 3 hours a day, and not engaging on a sports team remained consistent in their significant association with adolescent obesity across all groups. The findings from this study suggest that certain risk behaviors play an important role in adolescent obesity. Perhaps the most significant finding of our study that requires more investigation is the effect of education on adolescent obesity.

Background: Significant evidence exists about J-shaped relationship between alcohol consumption and total or cardiovascular disease (CVD)-specific mortality in US middleaged adults. Epidemiologic investigations presume that the J-shaped distribution is the sum of the detrimental effect of high levels of consumption on other causes of death and the protective effect on coronary heart disease (CHD) morbidity and mortality. Several studies demonstrated that moderate alcohol consumption reduces the risk of CHD. However, results have been inconsistent among heavy drinkers. In this study, we investigated the association of heavy alcohol consumption with CHD among adults aged 18-years or older in the US. Methods: Data from the 2015 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) were used to conduct this study. BRFSS is an annual cross-sectional survey administered to >400,000 adults in all 50 states to collect information about their health-related risk behaviors, chronic health conditions and the use of preventive services. Self-reported responses to BRFSS questionnaire were used to define study variables. Heavy alcohol consumption was defined as greater than 14 drinks (1 drink =12 ounces of beer) per week for men and 7 drinks per week for women. Logistic regression analysis was conducted to determine the association between history of coronary heart disease or angina and heavy alcohol consumption. The model was also adjusted for demographics (age, sex, and race), behaviors (exposure to tobacco smoking, physical activity, fruit consumption), other chronic conditions such as high blood pressure (ever been told having high blood pressure or not), high cholesterol (ever been told having high blood cholesterol or not) and overweight or obese. Results: Approximately 6% of study population reported history of CHD and 5% reported heavy alcohol consumption. The odds of having coronary heart disease or angina among heavy alcohol drinkers was 43% less than those who were not heavy alcohol drinkers (adjusted odds ratio: 0.57, 95% confidence interval: 0.52-0.62, pConclusion: The study findings demonstrate that heavy alcohol consumption is a protective factor for CHD morbidity. Future observational studies should be conducted to determine the overall benefits of heavy alcohol consumption as it relates to coronary heart diseases.

Background: Fatty acids (FA) have a role on energy storage and membrane formation. FA consists of an aliphatic chain with varying number of carbon and a carboxylic functional group. Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) exhibits a similar structure to that of the FA. Given their structural resemblance, we hypothesized that alterations in FA metabolism could arise from competition with PFOA for endogenous FA binding sites in transport and with FA binding proteins. Objectives: Explore associations of serum concentrations of perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) with serum concentrations of linoleic (LA), eicosapentanoic (EPA), and docosapentanoic (DHA) acid in adults. Methods: We analyzed data from 1,829, 20-80 years old participants in the 2003–2004 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). Linear regression models were used to estimate adjusted predicted means of the FA (in µmol/L) for quartiles of PFOA (in ng/mL) and explore linear trends. Results: Increasing concentrations of PFOA were not associated with adjusted predicted means of serum LA (Q1 3534, Q2 3445, Q3 3778, Q4 3399) (p trends=0.6460). Increasing concentrations of PFOA, however, were associated with increasing trends in adjusted predicted means of serum EPA (Q1 49.8, Q2 51.5, Q3 60.9, Q4 55.7).

No description available.

Objectives: Asthma is a genetic disease that requires an environmental trigger to manifest in predisposed individuals. This study aims to assess the prevalence of asthma among U.S. adolescents and possible environmental triggers to asthma. Methods: This is a secondary analysis of the Youth Risk Behavioral Survey 2015 (YRBS 2015). A total of 15,624 high school students in the U.S. were included in this analysis. The YRBS was established by Center for disease control and prevention (CDC) in 1991 to monitor six priority health risk behaviors among youths and young adults. Data were collected via self-administered questionnaire which was validated by CDC through a two test reliability studies. The Data was analyzed using SAS v 9.4. Results: The overall prevalence of asthma was 23.08% with no significant difference between male (22.84%) and female (23.31%). Simple logistic regression analysis showed that the estimated odds of having asthma among individuals that initiated cigarette smoking before the age of 13 years was about 40% higher than those who did not (Odds Ratio (OR): 1.40, 95% CI: 1.22-1.62, p<0.0001). The odds of having asthma was also significantly higher among individuals who used marijuana before the age of 13 years (OR: 1.25, 95% CI: 1.11-1.46, p<0.001) than those who did not. Furthermore, the estimated odds of having asthma was 25% higher in individuals currently using marijuana (OR: 1.25, 95%CI: 1.14-1.37, p<0.0001) than those who do not and 44% higher among obese individuals (OR: 1.44, 95%CI: 1.29-1.60, p<0.0001) compared to non-obese individuals. Sleeping eight or more hours per day was protective against asthma (OR: 0.81, 95% CI: 0.74-0.88, P<0.0001). After adjusting for age and other factors, multiple logistic regression showed that the odds of having asthma was approximately 26% higher among individuals who initiated cigarette smoking before the age of 13 years (adjusted OR (aOR): 1.26, 95% CI: 1.01- 1.57, P=0.037) than those who did not. Moreover, the odds of having asthma was 18% higher among those who initiated alcohol drinking before the age of 13 years (aOR: 1.18, 95%CI: 1.04-1.35, P=0.014), compared to those who did not. There was no association found between asthma and physical activity, the use of marijuana after adjusting for age and other potential risk factors. Conclusion: While sleeping more than eight hours per day was protective against asthma, early initiation of cigarette smoking, marijuana, and alcohol drinking was positively associated with asthma. Encouraging children to sleep minimum of eight hours per day will potentially decrease asthma prevalence.

In 2007, Domínguez-Molina et al. obtained the moment generating function (mgf) of the matrix variate closed skew normal distribution. In this paper, we use their mgf to obtain the first two moments and some additional properties of quadratic forms for the matrix variate skew normal distributions. The quadratic forms are particularly interesting because they are essentially correlation tests that introduce a new type of orthogonality condition.

No description available.

Studies of the adverse impacts of high temperature on human health have been primarily focusing on urban areas, due in part to the facts that urban centers generally have higher population density and are often significantly warmer than its surrounding rural areas (Heat Island Effect), and thus urban areas are considered to be more vulnerable to summer heat. However, heat vulnerability can also be affected by other population characteristics such as age, education, income and social isolation, which are likely to mark greater vulnerability among rural population. Here we explore the vulnerability to heat-related mortality in rural areas through a systematic review and meta-analysis of existing evidence. We searched studies that examined the association between high ambient temperature and morality in rural areas published in English between 2000 and 2016. Heat-mortality effect estimates from selected studies are grouped into two: (1) Rural effect estimates (RRrural) and their corresponding urban effect estimates (RRurban), from studies that reported risk estimates for both urban and their surrounding rural areas (7 studies included); (2) Rural effect estimates only (12 studies included). For Group 1, we performed a meta-analysis of the ratio of the rural estimate to the urban estimate in order to compare the magnitude of effects in rural versus urban areas. For Group 2, we performed a meta-analysis of the effect estimates in rural areas only. The pooled ratio estimate (RRrural/RRurban) for Group 1 is 1.051 (95% CI: 0.954, 1.160), which indicates the rural relative risk is about 5% larger than the urban relative risk. The pooled estimate for Group 2 is 1.191 (95% CI: 1.13, 1.251). Our preliminary results suggest that vulnerability to heat in rural areas may be similar to or even higher than urban areas, indicating that more studies are needed to understand rural vulnerability to heat-related hazards.