Background: Pain in older adults is an increasing concern in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), with literature suggesting an association with past traumatic events (TEs) in high-income settings. We aim to investigate this relationship in a population-representative sample of older adults with high burden of TEs in a rural South African community.
Methods: The Health and Aging in Africa: A longitudinal Study of an INDEPTH Community in South Africa (HAALSI) study collected data pain intensity, using the Brief Pain Inventory, and TEs with a 16-item questionnaire, from 2411 participants aged 40-79 in 2014-15.
A population's current growth rate is determined jointly by changes in fertility, mortality, and migration. This overall growth rate is also the average of age-specific growth rates, which can be decomposed into the result of historical changes in fertility, mortality, and migration. However, doing so requires more than 100 years of historical data, meaning that such analyses are possible only in a select few populations.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBasal cell carcinoma (BCC) is a common skin cancer that occurs due to various genetic and environmental factors. Diagnosis is made by a combination of clinical appearance, biopsy, imaging, and histopathological analysis. This review describes the current array of imaging modalities available to physicians to aid in the diagnosis of BCC.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: Accurate measurement of renal mass size is crucial in the management of renal cancer. With the burdensome cost of imaging yet its need for management, a better understanding of the variability among patients when determining mass size remains of urgent importance. Current guidelines on optimal imaging are limited, especially with respect to body mass index (BMI).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMelanomas arise de novo or in the context of a precursor lesion. Lesions typically grow radially and then undergo a vertical growth phase proceeding to local invasion and metastasis. This review describes the utility of different imaging modalities in diagnosis and melanocytic lesion monitoring.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Gerontol B Psychol Sci Soc Sci
April 2024
Objectives: Social inequalities in mortality are poorly studied in much of the Asia-Pacific. Using data from harmonized nationally representative longitudinal health and aging surveys our study systematically assesses mortality disparities across 3 standardized measures of socioeconomic status in 7 Asia-Pacific countries.
Methods: We used data from multiple waves of 7 representative sample surveys: the Health, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey, China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study, the Indonesian Family Life Survey, the New Zealand Health, Work and Retirement survey, the Korean Longitudinal Study on Ageing and the Health, Aging and Retirement in Thailand survey, and the Japanese Study of Aging and Retirement.
Multistate modeling is a commonly used method to compute healthy life expectancy. However, there is currently no analytical method to decompose the components of differentials in summary measures calculated from multistate models. In this research note, we propose a derivative-based method to decompose the differentials in population-based health expectancies estimated via a multistate model into two main components: the proportion resulting from differences in initial health structure and the proportion resulting from differences in health transitions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA substantial body of prior research has explored patterns of disability-free and morbidity-free life expectancy among older populations. However, these distinct facets of later-life health are almost always studied in isolation, even though they are very likely to be related. Using data from the US Health and Retirement Study and a multistate life table approach, this paper explores the interactions between disability, morbidity, and mortality by sex and education among four successive US birth cohorts, born from 1914 to 1923 to 1944-1953 and compared in the periods 1998-2008 and 2008-2018.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis study examines two decades of change in social inequalities in life and health expectancy among older adults in Australia, one of the few countries that escaped an economic recession during the global financial crisis. We compare adults aged 45+ across three measures of individual socio-economic position-education, occupation, and household wealth-and use multistate life tables to estimate total life expectancy (TLE) and life expectancy free of limiting long-term illness (LLTI-free LE) based on 20 waves of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey (2001-20). Our findings highlight substantial social disparities in both TLE and LLTI-free LE in Australia.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAims: We seek to understand the coexisting effects of population aging and a rising burden of diabetes on healthy longevity in South Africa.
Methods: We used longitudinal data from the 2015 and 2018 waves of the "Health and Aging in Africa: A Longitudinal Study of an INDEPTH Community in South Africa" (HAALSI) study to explore life expectancy (LE) and disability-free life expectancy (DFLE) of adults aged 45 and older with and without diabetes in rural South Africa. We estimated LE and DFLE by diabetes status using Markov-based microsimulation.
Background: The population of people living with HIV in South Africa is rapidly ageing due to increased survivorship attributable to antiretroviral therapy (ART). We sought to understand how the combined effects of HIV and ART have led to differences in healthy longevity by HIV status and viral suppression in this context.
Methods: In this observational cohort modelling study we use longitudinal data from the 2015 baseline interview (from Nov 13, 2014, to Nov 30, 2015) and the 2018 longitudinal follow-up interview (from Oct 12, 2018, to Nov 7, 2019) of the population-based study Health and Ageing in Africa: a Longitudinal Study of an INDEPTH Community in South Africa (HAALSI) to estimate life expectancy and disability-free life expectancy (DFLE) of adults aged 40 years and older in rural South Africa.
This article explores how patterns of health, morbidity, and disability have changed across successive generations of older adults in the United States. Using a novel method for comparing state-specific partial life expectancies-that is, total life expectancy (LE), and health expectancies (HEs) in different health states, bounded between two ages-I explore changes in healthy life expectancy across successive birth cohorts of the U.S.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn 2020, China's population aged 60 or older exceeded 264 million, representing 25% of the global population in that age-group. Older adults in China experienced periods of dramatic political and social unrest in early life, as well as economic transformations leading to drastic improvements in living standards during adulthood and older age. However, the implications of life course socioeconomic status (SES) trajectories for healthy longevity in later life have not been systematically studied in China.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe demographic balance equation relates the population growth rate with crude rates of fertility, mortality, and net migration. All these rates refer to changes occurring between two time points, say, t and t + h. However, this fundamental balance equation overlooks the contribution of historical fertility, mortality, and migration in explaining these population counts.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe population of older cancer survivors in the United States is rapidly growing. However, little is currently known about how the health of older cancer survivors has changed over time and across successive birth cohorts. Using data from the US Health and Retirement Study, we parameterized a demographic microsimulation model to compare partial cohort life expectancy (LE) and disability-free LE for US men and women without cancer and with prevalent and incident cancer diagnoses for 4 successive 10-year birth cohorts, born 1918-1927 to 1948-1957.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: Multimorbidity is associated with mortality in high-income countries. Our objective was to investigate the relationship between multimorbidity (≥2 of the following chronic medical conditions: hypertension, diabetes, dyslipidaemia, anaemia, HIV, angina, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, alcohol dependence) and all-cause mortality in an older, rural black South African population. We further investigated the relationship between HIV multimorbidity (HIV as part of the multimorbidity cluster) and mortality, while testing for the effect of frailty in all models.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: despite rapid population ageing, few studies have investigated frailty in older people in sub-Saharan Africa. We tested a cumulative deficit frailty index in a population of older people from rural South Africa.
Methods: analysis of cross-sectional data from the Health and Ageing in Africa: Longitudinal Studies of an INDEPTH Community (HAALSI) study.
Objectives: The importance of impairment in performing activities of daily living (ADL) is likely to increase in sub-Saharan Africa because few care options for affected people exist. This study investigated the prevalence of ADL impairment, the extent to which care need was met, and described characteristics of people with ADL impairment and unmet need in Burkina Faso.
Methods: This study used data from the Centre de Recherche en Santé de Nouna Heidelberg Aging Study, a population-based study among 3,026 adults aged older than 40 years conducted in rural Burkina Faso.
Objectives: To contribute to the current understanding of depressive disorders in sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries by examining the association of depressive symptoms with cardiovascular and cardiometabolic conditions in a population-based study of middle-aged and older adults in rural Burkina Faso.
Setting: This study was conducted in the Nouna Health and Demographic Surveillance System in north-western Burkina Faso, in a mixed rural and small-town environment. The data were obtained between May and July 2018.
Purpose: The Mature Adults Cohort of the Malawi Longitudinal Study of Families and Health (MLSFH-MAC) contributes to global ageing studies by providing a rare opportunity to study the processes of individual and population ageing, the public health and social challenges associated with ageing and the coincident shifts in disease burdens, in a low-income, high HIV prevalence, sub-Saharan African (SSA) context.
Participants: The MLSFH-MAC is an open population-based cohort study of mature adults aged 45+ years living in rural communities in three districts in Malawi. Enrolment at baseline is 1266 individuals in 2012.
Background: There are large differences in adult mortality across schooling groups in many high-income countries (HICs). An important open question is whether there are similar gradients in adult mortality in middle-income countries (MICs), where schooling and healthcare quality tends to be lower and health-related behaviors are often not strongly patterned by schooling.
Methods: We present one of the first international-comparative studies on schooling differences in adult mortality across MICs using harmonizedlongitudinal data on adults ages 50+ from China, Costa Rica, Indonesia, Mexico, South Africa, and South Korea.
Introduction: Multimorbidity is a health issue of increasing importance worldwide, and is likely to become particularly problematic in low-income countries (LICs) as they undergo economic, demographic and epidemiological transitions. Knowledge of the burden and consequences of multimorbidity in LICs is needed to inform appropriate interventions.
Methods: A cross-sectional household survey collected data on morbidities and frailty, disability, quality of life and physical performance on individuals aged over 40 years of age living in the Nouna Health and Demographic Surveillance System area in northwestern Burkina Faso.