Preventive medicine
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Motivation for smoking cessation benefits from physician counseling. To further improve this educational process, spirometry can demonstrate ventilatory impairment to the smoker. In addition to comparing a person's spirometric results with predicted reference values for normal subjects, estimation of "lung age" can be used to demonstrate the effects of cigarette smoking. ⋯ Normal and abnormal groups determined by a respiratory health questionnaire and pulmonary function testing were used to compare the value of single and combination spirometric tests. The forced expiratory volume at 1 sec proved superior to any other single test or combination for best separation of the two groups and had the lowest standard error for estimated lung age. Both spirometry and estimated lung age calculation may be useful for motivating cessation of cigarette smoking.
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Preventive medicine · Sep 1985
Comparative StudyStudies of serum lipoproteins of adolescent Japanese and U.S. (Bogalusa) children using a common laboratory.
A cross-cultural comparison of serum lipoprotein profiles was made between adolescent children ages 12, 15, 16, and 17 years from the United States (Bogalusa) and Japan using a common laboratory. Characteristically, adolescent white children have relatively low total and alpha-lipoprotein cholesterol levels and high pre-beta-lipoprotein cholesterol, while black children have high total and alpha-lipoprotein cholesterol levels and low triglycerides; Japanese children, in contrast, have high total and beta-lipoprotein cholesterol and disproportionately high triglyceride levels in relation to low levels of pre-beta-lipoprotein cholesterol. The sex-related differences were similar among Japanese and white children, with boys showing lower alpha-lipoprotein cholesterol and higher triglyceride levels than girls. ⋯ There was no inverse relationship between alpha-lipoprotein cholesterol and triglycerides or pre-beta-lipoprotein cholesterol in Japanese children. These observations suggest intrinsic metabolic differences among these race-sex groups. Such information should help elucidate environmental factors that influence cardiovascular risk among varied cultures.