Epidemiology
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The incidence of renal cell carcinoma in the United States differs by race/ethnicity. To better understand these disparities, we conducted a nested case-control study investigating renal cell carcinoma risk factors across racial/ethnic groups within the Kaiser Permanente Northern California health care network. ⋯ Our findings suggest that hypertension and chronic kidney disease likely have contributed to the observed excess in renal cell carcinoma incidence among blacks compared with whites.
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Studies have examined the effects of temperature on mortality in a single city, country, or region. However, less evidence is available on the variation in the associations between temperature and mortality in multiple countries, analyzed simultaneously. ⋯ People have some ability to adapt to their local climate type, but both cold and hot temperatures are still associated with increased risk of mortality. Public health strategies to alleviate the impact of ambient temperatures are important, in particular in the context of climate change.
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Snus is a smokeless tobacco product, widely used among Swedish men and increasingly so elsewhere. There is debate as to whether snus is an acceptable "harm-reduction" tobacco product. Since snus use delivers a dose of nicotine equivalent to cigarettes, and has been implicated in cardiac arrhythmia because of associations with sudden cardiovascular death, a relation with atrial fibrillation is plausible and important to investigate. ⋯ Findings from this large national pooling project indicate that snus use is unlikely to confer any important increase in risk of atrial fibrillation.
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Meta Analysis
Air pollution during pregnancy and childhood cognitive and psychomotor development: six European birth cohorts.
Accumulating evidence from laboratory animal and human studies suggests that air pollution exposure during pregnancy affects cognitive and psychomotor development in childhood. ⋯ Air pollution exposure during pregnancy, particularly NO2 (for which motorized traffic is a major source), was associated with delayed psychomotor development during childhood. Due to the widespread nature of air pollution exposure, the public health impact of the small changes observed at an individual level could be considerable.