PLoS medicine
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South Africa has the highest tuberculosis incidence globally (781/100,000), with an estimated 4.3% of cases being rifampicin resistant (RR). Control and elimination strategies will require detailed spatial information to understand where drug-resistant tuberculosis exists and why it persists in those communities. We demonstrate a method to enable drug-resistant tuberculosis monitoring by identifying high-burden communities in the Western Cape Province using routinely collected laboratory data. ⋯ Our maps reveal striking spatial and temporal heterogeneity in RR-tuberculosis percentages across this province. We demonstrate the potential to monitor RR-tuberculosis spatially and temporally with routinely collected laboratory data, enabling improved resource targeting and more rapid locally appropriate interventions.
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Earlier puberty is widely linked with future obesity and cardiometabolic disease. We examined whether age at puberty onset likely influences adiposity and cardiometabolic traits independent of childhood adiposity. ⋯ Our results suggest that puberty timing has a small influence on adiposity and cardiometabolic traits and that preventive interventions should instead focus on reducing childhood adiposity.
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The association of metabolic syndrome (MetS) with the development of Parkinson disease (PD) is currently unclear. We sought to determine whether MetS and its components are associated with the risk of incident PD using large-scale cohort data for the whole South Korean population. ⋯ Our population-based large-scale cohort study suggests that MetS and its components may be risk factors of PD development.
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Pharmacoepidemiological studies have long raised concerns on widespread use of benzodiazepines and benzodiazepine-related drugs (BZDs), in particular long-term use, among adults and the elderly. In contrast, evidence pertaining to the rates of BZD use at younger ages is still scarce, and the factors that influence BZD utilisation and shape the different prescribing patterns in youths remain largely unexplored. We examined the prevalence rates, relative changes in rates over time, and prescribing patterns for BZD dispensation in young people aged 0-24 years in Sweden during the period January 1, 2006-December 31, 2013, and explored demographic, clinical, pharmacological, and prescriber-related attributes of BZD prescribing in this group. ⋯ The overall increase in prevalence rates of BZD dispensations during the study period and the unexpectedly high proportion of individuals who were prescribed a BZD on a long-term basis at a young age indicate a lack of congruence with international and national guidelines. These findings highlight the need for close monitoring of prescribing practices, particularly in non-psychiatric settings, in order to build an evidence base for safe and efficient BZD treatment in young persons.
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[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1002589.].