Publications by authors named "Liam Wright"

Article Synopsis
  • Education impacts health, but studies have mainly focused on educational attainment rather than the type of institution attended, which affects resources and future socioeconomic outcomes.
  • The 1970 British Cohort Study examined the health outcomes of individuals based on the type of high school (comprehensive, grammar, private) and university (normal or higher-status) they attended at age 46, using multiple regression models to control for various factors.
  • Results showed that attending private schools and higher-status universities was linked to better health outcomes, such as lower body mass index and improved memory recall, highlighting the importance of considering educational institution type in health inequality research.
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Background: The widening of group-level socioeconomic differences in body mass index (BMI) has received considerable research attention. However, the predictive power of socioeconomic position (SEP) indicators at the individual level remains uncertain, as does the potential temporal variation in their predictive value. Examining this is important given the increasing incorporation of SEP indicators into predictive algorithms and calls to reduce social inequality to tackle the obesity epidemic.

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Socioeconomic inequalities in cardiovascular disease (CVD) persist in high-income countries despite marked overall declines in CVD-related morbidity and mortality. After decades of research, the field has struggled to unequivocally answer a crucial question: is the association between low socioeconomic position (SEP) and the development of CVD causal? We review relevant evidence from various study designs and disciplinary perspectives. Traditional observational, family-based and Mendelian randomization studies support the widely accepted view that low SEP causally influences CVD.

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Background: While systemic inflammation has been implicated in the etiology of selected neurodegenerative disorders, its role in the development of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a condition with high case-fatality, is untested. Accordingly, we quantified the relationship of C-reactive protein (CRP), an acute-phase reactant and marker of systemic inflammation, with subsequent ALS occurrence.

Methods: We used data from UK Biobank, a prospective cohort study of 502,649 participants who were aged 37 to 73 years when examined at research centers between 2006 and 2010.

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Article Synopsis
  • Body mass index (BMI) and obesity rates have been rising since the 1980s, with studies showing a link between higher cognitive ability in adolescents and lower BMI in adulthood; however, family background factors could influence this relationship.
  • Researchers analyzed data from multiple youth population studies involving over 12,000 siblings to differentiate the effects of individual cognitive ability from shared family influences on BMI.
  • Findings revealed that while higher adolescent cognitive ability is related to lower BMI between families, this association is significantly weaker when looking only at variations within families, suggesting that family environment plays a crucial role in this relationship.
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Background: Taller individuals have been repeatedly found to have higher scores on cognitive assessments. Recent studies have suggested that this association can be explained by genetic factors, yet this does not preclude the influence of environmental or social factors that may change over time. We thus tested whether the association changed across time using data from four British birth cohorts (born in 1946, 1958, 1970, and 2001).

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Importance: While systemic inflammation has been implicated in the aetiology of selected neurodegenerative disorders, its role in the development of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is untested.

Objective: To quantify the relationship of C-reactive protein (CRP), an acute-phase reactant and marker of systemic inflammation, with ALS occurrence.

Design Setting Participants: UK Biobank, a prospective cohort study of 502,649 participants who were aged 37 to 73 years when examined at research centres between 2006 and 2010.

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Embryo development is a critical and fascinating stage in the life cycle of many organisms. Despite decades of research, the earliest stages of mammalian embryogenesis are still poorly understood, caused by a scarcity of high-resolution spatial and temporal data, the use of only a few model organisms, and a paucity of truly multidisciplinary approaches that combine biological research with biophysical modeling and computational simulation. Here, we explain the theoretical frameworks and biophysical processes that are best suited to modeling the early mammalian embryo, review a comprehensive list of previous models, and discuss the most promising avenues for future work.

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Unlabelled: Cross-study research initiatives to understand change across time are an increasingly prominent component of social and health sciences, yet they present considerable practical, analytical and conceptual challenges. First, we discuss the key challenges to comparative research as a basis for detecting societal change, as well as possible solutions. We focus on studies which investigate changes across time in outcome occurrence or the magnitude and/or direction of associations.

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Background: Healthcare workers (HCWs) have provided vital services during the COVID-19 pandemic, but existing research consists of quantitative surveys (lacking in depth or context) or qualitative interviews (with limited generalisability). Structural Topic Modelling (STM) of large-scale free-text survey data offers a way of capturing the perspectives of a wide range of HCWs in their own words about their experiences of the pandemic.

Methods: In an online survey distributed to all staff at 18 geographically dispersed NHS Trusts, we asked respondents, "Is there anything else you think we should know about your experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic?".

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Genetic influences on body mass index (BMI) appear to markedly differ across life, yet existing research is equivocal and limited by a paucity of life course data. We thus used a birth cohort study to investigate differences in association and explained variance in polygenic risk for high BMI across infancy to old age (2-69 years). A secondary aim was to investigate how the association between BMI and a key purported environmental determinant (childhood socioeconomic position) differed across life, and whether this operated independently and/or multiplicatively of genetic influences.

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Background: Governments have implemented a range of measures focused on changing citizens' behaviors to lower the transmission of COVID-19. While international data shows that compliance did decline from the start of the pandemic, average trends could mask considerable heterogeneity in compliance behaviors.

Purpose: To explore trajectories of compliance with COVID-19 guidelines.

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Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has had substantial impacts on lives across the globe. Job losses have been widespread, and individuals have experienced significant restrictions on their usual activities, including extended isolation from family and friends. While studies suggest population mental health worsened from before the pandemic, not all individuals appear to have experienced poorer mental health.

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Emerging evidence suggests that partially distinct mechanisms may underlie the association between different dimensions of early life adversity (ELA) and psychopathology in children and adolescents. While there is minimal evidence that different types of ELA are associated with specific psychopathology outcomes, there are partially unique cognitive and socioemotional consequences of specific dimensions of ELA that increase transdiagnostic risk of mental health problems across the internalizing and externalizing spectra. The current review provides an overview of recent findings examining the cognitive (e.

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Background: Confidence in the central UK Government has declined since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, and while this may be linked to specific government actions to curb the spread of the virus, understanding is still incomplete. Examining public opinion is important, as research suggests that low confidence in government increases the extent of non-compliance with infection-dampening rules (for instance, social distancing); however, the detailed reasons for this association are still unclear.

Methods: To understand public opinion on the central UK government during the first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, we used structural topic modeling, a text mining technique, to extract themes from over 4000 free-text survey responses, collected between 14 October and 26 November 2020.

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Adaptive interpersonal functioning relies on the effectiveness of behavioral and neural systems involved in cognitive control. Whether different subcomponents of cognitive control and their neural representations are associated with distinctive interpersonal dispositions has yet to be determined. The present study investigated the relationships between prefrontal cortex (PFC) activation associated with two subcomponents of cognitive control and individual differences in interpersonally relevant traits and facets within the Five-Factor Model of personality.

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Background: During the COVID-19 pandemic, the UK government implemented a series of guidelines, rules, and restrictions to change citizens' behaviour to tackle the spread of the virus, such as the promotion of face masks and the imposition of lockdown stay-at-home orders. The success of such measures requires active co-operation on the part of citizens, but compliance was not complete. Detailed research is required on the factors that aided or hindered compliance with these measures.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study aims to understand how risk factors and interventions can affect not only the average health outcomes (like BMI and mental wellbeing) but also their variability, which is often overlooked in common statistical analyses.
  • Using data from the 1970 British birth cohort, the research applies Generalised Additive Models for Location, Scale and Shape (GAMLSS) to explore the relationship between various factors (like gender, childhood social class, and physical inactivity) and these health outcomes.
  • Findings reveal significant differences in health outcome variability, suggesting that lower social class and physical inactivity increase both the mean and variability of health outcomes, while GAMLSS presents a promising method for more comprehensive epidemiological studies.
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Background: Governments have implemented a range of measures to tackle COVID-19, primarily focusing on changing citizens' behaviours in order to lower the transmission of the virus. Few studies have looked at the patterns of compliance with different measures within individuals: whether people comply with all measures or selectively choose some but not others. Such research is important for designing interventions to increase compliance.

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Objectives: An association between youth unemployment and poorer mental health later in life has been found in several countries. Little is known about whether this association is consistent across individuals or differs in strength. We adopt a quantile regression approach to explore heterogeneity in the association between youth unemployment and later mental health along the mental health distribution.

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Introduction: COVID-19 vaccines do not confer immediate immunity and vaccinated individuals may still be at risk of transmitting the virus. Governments have not exempted vaccinated individuals from behavioural measures to reduce the spread of COVID-19, such as practising social distancing. However, vaccinated individuals may have reduced compliance with these measures, given lower perceived risks.

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In the absence of a vaccine, governments have focused on behaviour change (e.g. social distancing and enhanced hygiene procedures) to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Background: Several studies show that youth unemployment is associated with worse mental health later in life. However, existing studies report results for only one model, or a few models, and use regression adjustment to support causal claims. We use two novel methods to address these gaps in the literature.

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