Articles: mortality.
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From 1982 the Ministry of Health of Egypt implemented the National Control of Diarrhoeal Diseases Project (NCDDP) which attempted to improve case management of childhood diarrhoea by making oral rehydration salts (ORS) widely available and used, to improve feeding patterns during diarrhoea, and other measures. National data indicate a high level of success in achieving the targets. ⋯ Consequently, in 1988 the area was revisited to examine subsequent changes. Findings showed marked improvement in case management of diarrhoea and rapid mortality decline, with diarrhoeal mortality apparently declining somewhat faster than mortality from other causes.
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Left-handedness has been associated with decreased longevity, although this finding is controversial and not universal. The authors prospectively studied 39,691 women aged 55-69 years from the Iowa Women's Health Study through 5 years of mortality follow-up. No increase in mortality risk was found for left-handed women as compared with right-handed women (age-adjusted hazard ratio 1.10, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.86-1.39) or for ambidextrous women (age-adjusted hazard ratio 1.05, 95% CI 0.73-1.49). ⋯ Further analysis by cause-specific mortality (breast cancer, all other cancer, and circulatory disease) showed no relation to handedness. There was no difference in the mean age at death of left-handed, right-handed, and ambidextrous women. These findings do not support an association between left-handedness and increased mortality risk.
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Am. J. Phys. Anthropol. · Jul 1994
Comparative StudyNeonatal size and infant mortality at high altitude in the western Himalaya.
A prospective study was undertaken in Ladakh, India, a high-altitude region of the Himalaya, to investigate the effects of small average birth size on neonatal mortality. While such studies exist from high-altitude regions of the New World and shed light on the adaptive status of high-altitude-dwelling populations there, this is the first to examine this relationship in the Himalaya. In a sample of 168 newborns, birthweight and other anthropometric measurements were reduced relative to Andean and Tibetan newborns. ⋯ Compared to other high-altitude studies, small newborn size in Ladakh was associated with much higher mortality risks; mortality risk rose dramatically with birthweights below the mean (2,764 grams), which characterized 50% of all newborns. It is argued that newborns in Ladakh are subject to strong directional selective forces that favor higher birthweights that incur lower risks of neonatal mortality, while Andean infants are subject to relatively mild selection pressure at both ends of the birthweight distribution. Given the overall small size at birth of Ladakhi newborns and the poor survival outcomes of newborns below the mean, it is suggested that this population is less well adapted in a biological sense to the stresses inherent in this high-altitude environment than are Andean populations, perhaps due to the relatively recent colonization of the area and the substantial genetic admixture that has occurred in the past.