Journal of epidemiology and community health
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J Epidemiol Community Health · Feb 2011
Comparative StudyDifferences in citation rates by country of origin for papers published in top-ranked medical journals: do they reflect inequalities in access to publication?
The acceptance of a paper in a top-ranked journal depends on the importance of the study, and should not depend on its country of origin. If the papers' citation rate is a proxy for their importance, and the threshold for acceptance is unrelated to the country of origin, papers from different countries published in the same journal should have a similar number of citations. Conversely, if the threshold is lowered for some countries, their papers will have a lower mean citation rate. ⋯ Papers from different countries published in the same journal have different citation rates. This may reflect difficulties for researchers from some countries to publish their research in leading medical journals.
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J Epidemiol Community Health · Feb 2011
Social disparities in periodontitis among US adults: the effect of allostatic load.
Periodontitis has been shown to be associated with allostatic load, a measure of physiological instability across biological systems from cumulative or repeated adaptation to stressors. Minority racial/ethnic and low socioeconomic groups tend to have higher prevalence of periodontitis and are more likely to be exposed to stress. The association between periodontitis and allostatic load and whether this association differed by race/ethnicity, education, income and age among US adults were examined. ⋯ These data suggest that stress may be associated with periodontitis in the USA, with Mexican Americans exhibiting the strongest association. Furthermore, this group may lack appropriate coping responses to process chronic stressors that other groups may have historically been conditioned to handle. More research is needed to understand allostatic load in Mexican Americans and its influence on periodontitis.