Alberto J. Alaniz, Antonella Bacigalupo and Pedro E. Cattan

Our study, published recently in the IJE, shows that 43.9% of the world population — about three billion people — are exposed to Zika virus, due to the probability of presence of its vector: the mosquito Aedes aegypti.

Zika virus has become an important public health problem worldwide. In 2016, the World Health Organization released a global alert in response to the risk of this virus to the population. The pathogen is especially aggressive in pregnant women, because it has been associated with microcephaly in the fetus. On the other hand, it causes different clinical manifestations in adults, such as mild fever, rash, headache and joint pain. In some countries the alert was very restrictive, even going so far as to contemplate birth control programs to avoid the infection of pregnant women.

Continue reading “Spatial quantification of the world population potentially exposed to Zika virus: how many people are in danger?” →

Mika Ala-Korpela and George Davey Smith

Metabolic phenotyping, nowadays most often termed metabolomics, is becoming increasingly applied in epidemiology. Recent technological developments, driven by mass spectrometry and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, have recently resulted in increasing numbers of quantitative molecular applications at an epidemiological scale. The results suggest that these kinds of new technologies are inevitably becoming common in research projects aiming for molecular understanding of metabolic health and diseases. It is also evident from the epidemiological applications that absolute quantification of identified molecular entities is the very key for biomedical applications, not to mention potential clinical translation of metabolomics methodologies and findings. Continue reading “Metabolic Phenotyping in Epidemiology” →

Peter Muenning, Daniel Vail and Ryan K. Masters

When Michael Bloomberg was elected Mayor of New York City (NYC), he set forth an ambitious agenda to efficiently sync municipal agencies. Improving New Yorkers’ health was part of his motivation. For example, expanding parks and bike lanes would not only improve people’s quality of life and expand transportation options, their presence would also encourage healthy behaviours. So, why not create cross-agency agendas that allow parks with bike lanes to be created on city streets? Innovative thinkers were hired and were given an unusual amount of political capital and logistical support to implement their plans.

Sadly, very little was done to actually evaluate the programs that were implemented. When the Bloomberg administration promoted the idea that life expectancy had greatly increased as a result of its coordinated policymaking, some people scratched their heads. Sam Preston and Irma Elo argued that improvements in life expectancy in NYC could be explained by a large inflow of healthy foreign migrants. They made this argument by eloquently showing the influence that immigrants had on the city’s life expectancy.
Continue reading “Evolution or revolution? The health of New Yorkers under Mayor Bloomberg” →

World AIDS Day is held on 1 December every year and provides an opportunity for people across the globe to show solidarity with the millions of people living with HIV. This year’s campaign theme is ‘HIV Stigma: Not Retro, Just Wrong’ #HIVNotRetro and you can find out more about how to get involved at  https://www.worldaidsday.org/.

To mark World AIDS Day 2016 we are sharing an extract from Fighting the stigma of HIV and AIDS published on the OUP blog and co-authored by Landon Myer, a member of the IJE Editorial Board. The articles he references have been made freely available until 1 March 2017. Continue reading “Marking World AIDS Day 2016” →

Emily Rose Smith

Although the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends vitamin A supplementation for infants and preschool children aged 6 to 59 months to reduce morbidity and mortality, the debate about whether or not to supplement newborns has been controversial.  (Note that an exchange in IJE 44:1 in 2015 also demonstrated some controversy about whether or not to continue supplementation for preschool-aged children). In an attempt to inform global policy, three large clinical trials were conducted in Tanzania, Ghana, and India. However, these trials found conflicting results. The trial conducted in India—consistent with previous trials in the region—found that supplementation reduced the risk of infant death, while the other two trials in Ghana and Tanzania found no effect of supplementation.

Inconsistency between the trials might indicate that some, but not all, children benefit from neonatal vitamin A supplementation (NVAS). Our study, published in the IJE, examines data from the Neovita trial in Tanzania, the largest NVAS study ever conducted in sub-Saharan Africa. We looked to see if there were any subgroups of infants in this trial who benefited from supplementation. Continue reading “New evidence that maternal micronutrient status modifies the effect of neonatal vitamin A supplementation” →

Mika Ala-Korpela

Metabolic phenotyping, nowadays most often termed metabolomics, is becoming increasingly applied in molecular epidemiology. Recent technological developments resulting in increased numbers of quantitative molecular applications of metabolomics triggered the idea for a themed issue of the IJE on Metabolic Phenotyping in Epidemiology edited by George Davey Smith and myself.  Continue reading “Metabolic Phenotyping in Epidemiology” →

Daniel Himmelstein

A puzzling similarity
Researchers have long noted puzzling similarities between Hodgkin lymphoma and multiple sclerosis. Although the first is a cancer and the second is an autoimmune disease, risk for both diseases appears to increase due to the Epstein–Barr virus and a lack of sunlight. In fact having a family member with multiple sclerosis may place you at increased risk for Hodgkin lymphoma and vice versa. Now, a recent study, on which I am a co-author, has identified genetic similarities. Continue reading “Genome-wide association study gives rise to a new breed of disease network” →