Publications by authors named "Maria Y T Ichihara"

Article Synopsis
  • The study investigated the link between excess mortality during the COVID-19 pandemic and political partisanship in Brazil, focusing on death rates and election results from 2018 and 2022.
  • It was found that municipalities with higher votes for former President Bolsonaro correlated with increased excess deaths during the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021.
  • Despite the rising mortality rates, support for Bolsonaro did not waver in the 2022 elections, reflecting Brazil's tribal politics and strong emotional ties to political groups.
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Background: Preterm births increase mortality and morbidity during childhood and later life, which is closely associated with poverty and the quality of prenatal care. Therefore, income redistribution and poverty reduction initiatives may be valuable in preventing this outcome. We assessed whether receipt of the Brazilian conditional cash transfer programme - Bolsa Familia Programme, the largest in the world - reduces the occurrence of preterm births, including their severity categories, and explored how this association differs according to prenatal care and the quality of Bolsa Familia Programme management.

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Introduction: Health inequalities in Brazil have deepened on Covid-19 pandemic, and the most vulnerable people were the more affected. A multidisciplinary team from Cidacs/Fiocruz Bahia developed a Social Disparities Index for Covid-19 (IDS-COVID-19) to support the evaluation of effects of health inequalities on the pandemic in Brazil. Public Involvement and Engagement were the pillars of this research because they allowed us to access first hand experiences about the social context in our country.

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  • The study aimed to assess the trends and socio-economic inequalities in infant and young child feeding practices in Brazil, using data from 2008-2019 and the Brazilian deprivation index (BDI).
  • Researchers found that breast-feeding and complementary feeding practices varied significantly between communities with high and low deprivation, with better outcomes in less deprived areas.
  • Despite some overall improvements in complementary feeding indicators, the benefits were not evenly shared, indicating that children in wealthier municipalities experienced greater advancements compared to those in more deprived regions.
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Background: Syphilis is among the most common sexually transmitted infections worldwide. When it occurs during pregnancy, it can seriously affect the fetus and newborn`s health. The scarcity of studies on maternal and congenital syphilis in Indigenous Peoples remains an obstacle to its control in these populations.

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Objective: To compare the death counts from three sources of information on mortality available in Brazil in 2010, the Mortality Information System (SIM - Sistema de Informações sobre Mortalidade ), Civil Registration Statistic System (RC - Sistema de Estatísticas de Resgistro Civil ), and the 2010 Demographic Census at various geographical levels, and to confirm the association between municipal socioeconomic characteristics and the source which showed the highest death count.

Methods: This is a descriptive and comparative study of raw data on deaths in the SIM, RC and 2010 Census databases, the latter held in Brazilian states and municipalities between August 2009 and July 2010. The percentage of municipalities was confirmed by the database showing the highest death count.

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Article Synopsis
  • A study in Brazil examined changes in childhood malnutrition from 2009 to 2017, focusing on trends in stunting, wasting, and overweight among children under five using health data.
  • Results showed a significant rise in overweight cases (+3.4%) and a decline in wasting rates (-6.2%) but non-significant changes in stunting and the double burden of malnutrition.
  • The findings highlight persistent issues with stunting and rising overweight rates, particularly among the most vulnerable populations, indicating a need for effective social and political strategies to tackle these malnutrition challenges.
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The evaluation of vaccine effectiveness is conducted with real-world data. They are essential to monitor the performance of vaccination programmes over time, and in the context of the emergence of new variants. Until now, the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines has been assessed based on classic methods, such as cohort and test-negative case-control studies, which may often not allow for adequate control of inherent biases in the assignment of vaccination campaigns.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study aimed to explore how obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease affect severe outcomes from COVID-19 in hospitalized adults and elderly patients in Brazil.
  • Researchers analyzed data from over 21,000 inpatients who tested positive for COVID-19, focusing on severe outcomes like mechanical ventilation use, ICU admission, and death.
  • Results showed that obesity combined with diabetes and/or cardiovascular disease significantly increased the risk of severe COVID-19 outcomes, particularly in adults, while obesity alone had a notable impact on elderly patients.
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Even in the period when the Covid-19 pandemic was on the rise in the Northeast of Brazil, the relaxation of social distancing measures was introduced. The scope of the study is to assess, in the light of the epidemiological-sanitary situation in the region, the suitability of relaxation of social distancing measures. Based on the WHO guidelines for relaxation of social distancing, operational indicators were created and analyzed for each guideline in the context of the Northeast.

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Background: Record linkage is the process of identifying and combining records about the same individual from two or more different datasets. While there are many open source and commercial data linkage tools, the volume and complexity of currently available datasets for linkage pose a huge challenge; hence, designing an efficient linkage tool with reasonable accuracy and scalability is required.

Methods: We developed CIDACS-RL (Centre for Data and Knowledge Integration for Health - Record Linkage), a novel iterative deterministic record linkage algorithm based on a combination of indexing search and scoring algorithms (provided by Apache Lucene).

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Importance: Despite progress toward reducing global incidence, leprosy control remains a challenge in low- and middle-income countries.

Objective: To estimate new case detection rates of leprosy among household contacts of patients with previously diagnosed leprosy and to investigate its associated risk factors.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This population-based cohort study included families registered in the 100 Million Brazilian Cohort linked with nationwide registries of leprosy; data were collected from January 1, 2007, through December 31, 2014.

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Objective: To describe and assess currently used area-based measures of deprivation in Brazil for health research, to the purpose of informing the development of a future small area deprivation index.

Methods: We searched five electronic databases and seven websites of Brazilian research institutions and governmental agencies. Inclusion criteria were: studies proposing measures of deprivation for small areas (i.

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Background: Rotavirus has been the leading cause of severe cases of acute diarrhoea (AD) among children worldwide; however, in the same areas, a large reduction in AD related to rotavirus has been observed after the introduction of the rotavirus vaccine. In Brazil, where there is a high rotavirus vaccine coverage, AD caused by pathogens other than rotavirus is still a frequent cause of outpatient visits and hospitalisations among children under 5 years.

Methods: A hospital-based case-control study enrolled children aged 4 to 24 months admitted to 10 hospitals from all five Brazilian Regions.

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Rotavirus is one of the leading cause of hospitalization and outpatients visits among children under five years. This study evaluated overall and genotype-specific vaccine effectiveness of oral monovalent rotavirus vaccine (G1P[8] strain) in preventing hospital admission of Brazilian children with rotavirus acute diarrhea. A hospital based case-control study was conducted in five Regions of Brazil using the National Rotavirus Acute Diarrhea Surveillance System from July 2008 to August 2011.

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Analysis of 27 rotavirus strains from vaccinated and unvaccinated children revealed reassortment events in 3 strains: a gene derived from a vaccine; a gene acquired from a circulating strain; and reassortment between circulating strains. Data suggest that the widespread use of this monovalent rotavirus vaccine may introduce vaccine genes into circulating human rotaviruses or vice versa.

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In 2009 the World Health Organization recommended the use of group A rotavirus (RVA) vaccines in all national immunization programs (NIPs) in order to control severe RVA gastroenteritis disease. In Brazil, Rotarix™ was introduced in the NIP in March 2006, and a significant reduction in mortality rates among children ≤ 5 years old was observed, especially in the Northern and Northeastern Brazil. In the current study the 11 gene segments of six Brazilian G1P[6] RVA strains, isolated in 2009 and 2010 from vaccinated children, were analyzed in order to investigate if the genetic composition of these strains might help to elucidate why they were able to cause acute gastroenteritis in vaccinated children.

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