Artículos por autor
Permanent URI for this communityhttps://repositorio.sibdi.ucr.ac.cr/handle/123456789/16035
Browse
5 results
Search Results
Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
Item Surprising SES gradients in mortality, health, and biomarkers in a Latin American population of adults(Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences 64B(1), 2009) Dow, William H.; Rosero Bixby, LuisBackground. To determine socioeconomic status (SES) gradients in the different dimensions of health among elderly Costa Ricans. Hypothesis: SES disparities in adult health are minimal in Costa Rican society. Methods. Data from the Costa Rican Study on Longevity and Healthy Aging study: 8,000 elderly Costa Ricans to determine mortality in the period 2000 – 2007 and a subsample of 3,000 to determine prevalence of several health conditions and biomarkers from anthropometry and blood and urine specimens. Results. The ultimate health indicator, mortality, as well as the metabolic syndrome, reveals that better educated and wealthier individuals are worse off. In contrast, quality of life – related measures such as functional and cognitive disabilities, physical frailty, and depression all clearly worsen with lower SES. Overall self-reprted health (SRH) also shows a strong positive SES gradient. Traditional cardiovascular risk factors such as diabetes and cholesterol are not signifi cantly related to SES, but hypertension and obesity are worse among high-SES individuals. Refl ecting mixed SES gradients in behaviors, smoking and lack of exercise are more common among low SES, but high calorie diets are more common among high SES. Conclusions. Negative modern behaviors among high-SES groups may be reversing cardiovascular risks across SES groups, hence reversing mortality risks. But negative SES gradients in healthy years of life persist.Item Differences in the association of cardiovascular risk factors with education: a comparison of Costa Rica (CRELES) and the USA (NHANES)(J Epidemiol Community Health 2010: 64, 2009) Rehkopf, David H.; Dow, William H.; Rosero Bixby, LuisBackground Despite different levels of economic development, Costa Rica and the USA have similar mortalities among adults. However, in the USA there are substantial differences in mortality by educational attainment, and in Costa Rica there are only minor differences. This contrast motivates an examination of behavioural and biological correlates underlying this difference. Methods The authors used data on adults aged 60 and above from the Costa Rican Longevity and Healthy Ageing Study (CRELES) (n¼2827) and from the US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) (n¼5607) to analyse the cross-sectional association between educational level and the following risk factors for cardiovascular disease (CVD): ever smoked, current smoker, sedentary, high saturated fat, high carbohydrates, high calorie diet, obesity, severe obesity, large waist circumference, HDL cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, triglycerides, hemoglobin A1c, fasting glucose, C-reactive protein, systolic blood pressure and BMI. Results There were significantly fewer hazardous levels of risk biomarkers at higher levels of education for more than half (10 out of 17) of the risk factors in the USA, but for less than a third of the outcomes in Costa Rica (five out of 17). Conclusions These results are consistent with the context-specific nature of educational differences in risk factors for CVD and with a non-uniform nature of association of CVD risk factors with education within countries. Our results also demonstrate that social equity in mortality is achieved without uniform equity in all risk factors.Item Predicting mortality with biomarkers : a population-based prospective cohort study for elderly Costa Ricans(Population Health Metrics 10(1), 2012) Rosero Bixby, Luis; Dow, William H.Background: Little is known about adult health and mortality relationships outside high-income nations, partly because few datasets have contained biomarker data in representative populations. Our objective is to determine the prognostic value of biomarkers with respect to total and cardiovascular mortality in an elderly population of a middle-income country, as well as the extent to which they mediate the effects of age and sex on mortality. Methods: This is a prospective population-based study in a nationally representative sample of elderly Costa Ricans. Baseline interviews occurred mostly in 2005 and mortality follow-up went through December 2010. Sample size after excluding observations with missing values: 2,313 individuals and 564 deaths. Main outcome: prospective death rate ratios for 22 baseline biomarkers, which were estimated with hazard regression models. Results: Biomarkers significantly predict future death above and beyond demographic and self-reprted health conditions. The studied biomarkers account for almost half of the effect of age on mortality. However, the sex gap in mortality became several times wider after controlling for biomarkers. The most powerful predictors were simple physical tests: handgrip strength, pulmonary peak flow, and walking speed. Three blood tests also predicted prospective mortality: C-reactive protein (CRP), glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c), and dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate (DHEAS). Strikingly, high blood pressure (BP) and high total cholesterol showed little or no predictive power. Anthropometric measures also failed to show significant mortality effects. Conclusions: This study adds to the growing evidence that blood markers for CRP, HbA1c, and DHEAS, along with organ-specific functional reserve indicators (handgrip, walking speed, and pulmonary peak flow), are valuable tools for identifying vulnerable elderly. The results also highlight the need to better understand an anomaly noted previously in other settings: despite the continued medical focus on drugs for BP and cholesterol, high levels of BP and cholesterol have little predictive value of mortality in this elderly population.Item Long-term association of economic inequality and mortality in adult Costa Ricans(Social Science & Medicine; Volumen 74, Número 2, 2012) Modrek, Sepideh; Dow, William H.; Rosero Bixby, LuisDespite the large number of studies, mostly in developed economies, there is limited consensus on the health effects of inequality. Recently a related literature has examined the relationship between relative deprivation and health as a mechanism to explain the economic inequality and health relationship. This study evaluates the relationship between mortality and economic inequality, as measured by area-level Gini coefficients, as well as the relationship between mortality and relative deprivation, in the context of a middle-income country, Costa Rica. We followed a nationally representative prospective cohort of approximately 16,000 individuals aged 30 and over who were randomly selected from the 1984 census. These individuals were then linked to the Costa Rican National Death Registry until Dec. 31, 2007. Hazard models were used to estimate the relative risk of mortality for all-cause and cardiovascular disease mortality for two indicators: canton-level income inequality and relative deprivation based on asset ownership. Results indicate that there was an unexpectedly negative association between canton income inequality and mortality, but the relationship is not robust to the inclusion of canton fixed-effects. In contrast, we find a positive association between relative deprivation and mortality, which is robust to the inclusion of canton fixed-effects. Taken together, these results suggest that deprivation relative to those higher in a hierarchy is more detrimental to health than the overall dispersion of the hierarchy itself, within the Costa Rican context.Item Pulse blood pressure and cardiovascular mortality in a population-based cohort of elderly Costa Ricans(Journal of Human Hypertension; Volumen 30, Número 9, 2016) Rosero Bixby, Luis; Coto Yglesias, Fernando; Dow, William H.We studied the relationships between blood pressure (BP), pulse pressure (PP) and cardiovascular (CV) death in older adults using data from 2346 participants enrolled in the Costa Rican CRELES study, mean age 76 years (s.d. 10.2), 31% qualified as wide PP. All covariates included and analyzed were collected prospectively as part of a 4-year home-based follow-up; mortality was tracked for an additional 3 years, identifying 266 CV deaths. Longitudinal data revealed little change over time in systolic BP (SBP), a decline in diastolic BP, and widening of PP. Wide PP was associated with higher risk of CV death but only among individuals receiving antihypertensive drug therapy. Individuals with both wide PP and receiving therapy had 2.6 hazard rate of CV death relative to people with normal-PP plus not taking treatment (TRT), even adjusting for SBP. Increasing PP between visits was significantly associated to higher CV death independently of TRT status. SBP and DBP were not significantly associated to CV death when the effect of PP was controlled for. Conclusion: elderly hypertensive patients with wide or increasing PP, especially if receiving TRT, are the highest CV risk group, thus must be carefully assessed, monitored and treated with caution.