Validation study of cause of death statistics in Cape Town, South Africa, found poor agreement.

Objective: The validity of the underlying cause of death on death notification forms was assessed by comparing it to the underlying cause determined independently from medical records.

Study Design And Setting: Retrospective study of 703 deaths in two suburbs of Cape Town, South Africa. Two medical doctors completed a medical review death certificate to validate the registration death certificate for each decedent.

Associations with virologic treatment failure in adults on antiretroviral therapy in South Africa.

Objectives: Highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) has been available in government facilities in the Western Cape Province of South Africa since 2001. We aimed to investigate factors associated with virologic treatment failure in this setting.

Design: Case-control study, matched on facility and on starting date and duration of HAART.

Indices of body and brain size at birth and at the age of 2 years: relations to cognitive outcome at the age of 16 years in low birth weight infants.

Objective: To determine in low birth weight infants the relations of being small for gestational age at birth, microcephalic at birth, low weight for age at 2 years, and microcephalic at 2 years to full scale intelligence quotient (FSIQ) at the age of 16 years.

Methods: A prospective observational study of 422 of 837 eligible nondisabled low birth weight (<2000 g) adolescents from the newborn brain hemorrhage cohort with weight and head circumference at birth and at the age of 2 years in whom FSIQ was assessed with the Wechsler Abbreviated Scales of Intelligence at the age of 16 years.

Results: In a multiple regression analysis, being small for gestational age (beta = -0.

Cardiovascular disease risk factors and women prisoners in the UK: the impact of imprisonment.

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is a leading cause of death throughout the world. In high income countries, the greatest burden of disease is seen in those from lower socio-economic groups. It is therefore likely that CVD is an important issue for prisoners in the UK, the majority of whom were either unemployed or in non-skilled employment prior to imprisonment.

Deaths caused by HIV disease under-reported in South Africa.

Modelling of trends in age-specific death rates in South Africa suggests that deaths attributable to HIV are often misclassified on death notification forms. We compared the underlying cause of death from death notification forms with that based on scrutiny of medical records for 683 deaths in Cape Town. Of 129 deaths caused by HIV according to medical records, only 35 (27.