Epidemiology
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Current safety guidelines recommend that children age 12 or younger sit in the rear seat of passenger vehicles. However, front row seating among these children remains common. To develop future educational and other interventions to decrease front row seating of young children, it is important to examine factors associated with this behavior. ⋯ Educational interventions can be tailored to address the specific needs of subgroups of drivers and children to reduce front row seating. In addition, these data could be used to support legislative interventions to limit front row seating of younger children when a teenager is driving.
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Snow sports such as skiing and snowboarding are recognized as hazardous, but population-based injury rates or specific risk factors have been difficult to estimate as a result of a lack of complete data for both numerator and denominator. ⋯ Except for lower extremity injuries, snowboarders have a higher rate of injuries than skiers. Furthermore, collision-related injury rates have increased over time for snowboarders. Targeted injury prevention strategies in this group seem justified.
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Veterans of the first Gulf War have higher rates of medical and psychiatric symptoms than nondeployed military personnel. ⋯ Current anxiety disorders are relatively frequent in a military population and are more common among Gulf War veterans than nondeployed military personnel. Predeployment psychiatric difficulties are robustly associated with the development of anxiety. Healthcare providers and policymakers need to consider panic disorder and generalized anxiety disorder, in addition to posttraumatic stress disorder, to ensure their proper assessment, treatment, and prevention in veteran populations.
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Despite evidence supporting an association between ambient air pollutants and cardiovascular disease (CVD), the roles of the physicochemical components of particulate matter (PM) and copollutants are not fully understood. This time-series study examined the relation between ambient air pollution and cardiovascular conditions using ambient air quality data and emergency department visit data in Atlanta, Georgia, from January 1, 1993, to August 31, 2000. ⋯ These findings provide evidence for an association between CVD visits and several correlated pollutants, including gases, PM2.5, and PM2.5 components.