• Am. J. Respir. Crit. Care Med. · Sep 2011

    Comparative Study

    Understanding socioeconomic and racial differences in adult lung function.

    • David Van Sickle, Sheryl Magzamen, and John Mullahy.
    • Department of Population Health Sciences, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, Wisconsin 53726, USA. vansickle@wisc.edu
    • Am. J. Respir. Crit. Care Med. 2011 Sep 1; 184 (5): 521527521-7.

    RationaleThe contribution of socioeconomic factors to racial differences in the distribution of lung function is not well understood.ObjectivesWe investigated the contribution of socioeconomic factors to racial differences in FEV₁ using statistical tools that allow for examination across the population distribution of FEV₁.MethodsWe compared FEV₁ for white and African-American participants (aged 20-80 yr) in NHANES III with greater than or equal to two acceptable maneuvers to a restricted sample following the routine exclusion criteria used to derive population reference equations. Ordinary least squares and quantile regression analyses using spirometric, anthropometric, and socioeconomic data (high school completion) were performed separately by sex for both data sets.Measurements And Main ResultsIn the entire sample with acceptable spirometry (n ¼ 9,658), high school completion was associated with a mean 69.13-ml increase in FEV₁ for males (P , 0.05) and a mean 50.75-ml increase in FEV₁ for females (P , 0.01). In quantile regression analysis, we observed a significant racial difference in the association of high school completion with FEV₁ among both sexes that varied across the distribution; college completion was associated with an additional increase in FEV₁ for white males (70.36-250.76 ml) and white females (57.87-317.77 ml). Routine exclusion criteria differentially excluded individuals by age, race, and education. In the restricted sample (n ¼ 2,638), the association with high school completion was not significant.ConclusionsHigh school completion is associated with racially patterned improvements in the FEV₁ of adults in the general population. The application of routine exclusion criteria leads to underestimates of the role of high school completion on FEV₁.

      Pubmed     Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…