Publications by authors named "George David Batty"

Background: Morbidities related to obesity are usually associated with its severity and duration. Yet, the onset of serious morbidities in early adulthood among otherwise healthy adolescents with obesity is understudied. We aimed to investigate the association between adolescent BMI and serious morbidities before age 25 years.

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The authors have withdrawn their manuscript owing to errors apparent in the results. Therefore, the authors do not wish this work to be cited as reference for the project. If you have any questions, please contact the corresponding author.

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Poorer performance on standard tests of pre-morbid cognitive function is related to an elevated risk of death from lower respiratory tract infections but the link with coronavirus (COVID‑19) mortality is untested. Participants in UK Biobank, aged 40 to 69 years at study induction (2006-10), were administered a reaction time test, an indicator of information processing speed, and also had their verbal-numeric reasoning assessed. Between April 1st and September 23rd 2020 there were 388 registry-confirmed deaths (138 women) ascribed to COVID-19 in 494,932 individuals (269,602 women) with a reaction time test result, and 125 such deaths (38 women) in the subgroup of 180,198 people (97,794 women) with data on verbal-numeric reasoning.

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Background: We examined socioeconomic inequalities in disability-free life expectancy in older men and women from England and the United States and explored whether people in England can expect to live longer and healthier lives than those in the United States.

Methods: We used harmonized data from the Gateway to Global Aging Data on 14,803 individuals aged 50+ from the U.S.

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Objective: With there being an apparent impact of experience of out-of-home care in childhood on chronic disease and mortality, we examined how such adversity might be embodied such that it has a measurable impact on human biology, so mediating this relationship.

Methods: We used data from the UK National Child Development Study in which exposure to public care was prospectively gathered on three occasions up to age 16. Study members also participated in a social survey at age 42 and a clinical examination at age 44/45 when cardiovascular, inflammatory, neuroendocrine, and respiratory risk markers for mortality were collected, 19 of which were included as endpoints in the present analyses.

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The size of a person's social network is linked to health and longevity, but it is unclear whether the number of strong social ties or the number of weak social ties is most influential for health. We examined social network characteristics as predictors of mortality in the Finnish Public Sector Study (n = 7,617) and the Health and Social Support Study (n = 20,816). Social network characteristics were surveyed at baseline in 1998.

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The association between childhood body weight and adult health has been little-examined, and findings are inconsistent.In a representative sample of the Scottish nation (the Scottish Mental Survey of 1947), we examined the association between body mass index measured at 11 years of age and future cause-specific mortality by age 77 years. In this cohort study, a maximum of 67 years of follow-up of 3839 study members gave rise to 1568 deaths (758 from cardiovascular disease, 610 from any malignancy).

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Aims: To investigate cross-sectional and longitudinal associations between personality and smoking, and test whether socio-demographic factors modify these associations.

Design: Cross-sectional and longitudinal individual-participant meta-analysis.

Setting: Nine cohort studies from Australia, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States.

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Background: Colorectal cancer has several modifiable behavioural risk factors but their relationship to the risk of colon and rectum cancer separately and between countries with high and low incidence is not clear.

Methods: Data from participants in the Asia Pacific Cohort Studies Collaboration (APCSC) were used to estimate mortality from colon (International Classification of Diseases, revision 9 (ICD-9) 153, ICD-10 C18) and rectum (ICD-9 154, ICD-10 C19-20) cancers. Data on age, body mass index (BMI), serum cholesterol, height, smoking, physical activity, alcohol and diabetes mellitus were entered into Cox proportional hazards models.

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Aims: Cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) is a key predictor of chronic disease, particularly cardiovascular disease (CVD), but its assessment usually requires exercise testing which is impractical and costly in most health-care settings. Non-exercise testing cardiorespiratory fitness (NET-F)-estimating methods are a less resource-demanding alternative, but their predictive capacity for CVD and total mortality has yet to be tested. The objective of this study is to examine the association of a validated NET-F algorithm with all-cause and CVD mortality.

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Background: The impact of socioeconomic inequalities on health is well-documented. Despite the links of periodontal disease with cardiovascular diseases, adverse pregnancy outcomes and diabetes, no meta-analysis of socioeconomic variations in periodontal disease exists. This meta-analytic review was conducted to determine the extent to which education attainment influences risk of periodontitis in adults aged 35+ years in the general population.

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Background: Modifiable behavioural risk factors--including exercise, obesity and smoking--have been causally associated with colorectal cancer mortality. However, results have been inconsistent and undiagnosed cancers may affect baseline risk factors, distorting the temporal relationship that is observed between them.

Objective: To determine whether risk factors for colorectal cancers available in the Whitehall I study were predictive of colonic or rectal cancer mortality.

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Aims: The aim of this study was to compare the strength of associations and discrimination capability of body mass index (BMI), waist circumference (WC) and waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) with cardiovascular disease risk in individuals with type-2 diabetes.

Methods And Results: Eleven thousand, one hundred and forty men and women were followed for a mean of 4.8 years.

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Lower IQ test scores are related to an increased risk of violent assault. We tested the relation between IQ and death by homicide. In a prospective cohort study of 14,537 men (21 homicides), the association between lower IQ and an increased risk of homicide was lost after multiple adjustment.

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