The Link Between Health Literacy and Three Conditions of Metabolic Syndrome: Obesity, Diabetes and Hypertension.

Purpose: Health literacy (HL) intervention could be a potential prevention strategy to reduce the risk of metabolic syndrome (MS), but the association between low HL and MS is controversial. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate whether low HL is associated with obesity, diabetes, and hypertension, considering them as one cluster.

Methods: We used data from the Hamburg Diabetes Prevention Survey, a population-based cross-sectional study in Germany.

Low health literacy is associated with higher risk of type 2 diabetes: a cross-sectional study in Germany.

Background: Low health literacy is believed to be associated with behaviours that increase the risk of type 2 diabetes. But there is limited knowledge on the relation between health literacy (HL) and diabetes risk, and whether improving HL could be a potential prevention strategy. Therefore, the main purpose of this study was to examine the link between HL and diabetes risk among non-diabetic adults.

[Methodological Challenges of Prevention Reporting - More to it Than Just Evidence Reporting!].

Background: The German Prevention Act came into force in 2015 with the aim of strengthening prevention of disease and health promotion, focussing on settings-based approaches. An established field of public health action is thus strengthened and expanded by a set of rules that has largely come into force as a social security law. The implementation of legislation is to be accompanied by the establishment of a prevention reporting system.

[Regionalization of federal health reporting using the example of diabetes surveillance : Aims and results of the discussion between the Robert Koch Institute and the federal states].

Insufficiently treated diabetes mellitus can lead to severe comorbidities. National and international analyses show a continuous increase in diabetes prevalence over the last decades. Currently, an indicator-based national diabetes surveillance system is implemented at the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) to monitor and report on diabetes development on the basis of available primary and secondary data.

[Comparability of studies of epidemiological research on aging : Results from the Longitudinal Urban Cohort Ageing Study (LUCAS) and three representative Hamburg cross-sectional studies of healthy aging].

Background: Participants of the Longitudinal Urban Cohort Ageing Study (LUCAS) were recruited from patients 60 years and older from general practitioner's offices in Hamburg. This is different from the usual methods of drawing representative samples.

Objectives: The research question addressed the comparability of LUCAS results with those from cross-sectional surveys with participants randomly chosen from a population list.

Improved outcome in 445 patients with Wegener's granulomatosis in a German vasculitis center over four decades.

Objective: To determine the long-term outcome in patients with Wegener's granulomatosis (WG) over 4 decades in an academic hospital unit specializing in rheumatology.

Methods: We included 290 patients, divided them into 2 cohorts, and compared them with the historical cohort of 155 patients. Comparisons were retrospective regarding disease manifestations, therapy, mortality, and incidence of malignancies.

Lead exposure by drinking water: an epidemiologial study in Hamburg, Germany.

Study objective was to investigate the extent of lead exposure via tap water in Hamburg and the relevance of preventive strategies. Two hundred and forty-eight non-smoking young women participated in the cross-sectional study program and 52 women completed the intervention program. In the cross-sectional study program most women (N = 178) didn't know anything about the material of the plumbing system at their homes.

Evaluation of ambient air concentrations of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in Germany from 1990 to 1998.

All available polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) concentration data in ambient air obtained over the past 10 years in Germany were evaluated to clarify whether it is justified to use benzo(a)pyrene (BaP) as a marker compound for the total PAH exposure. The data basis comprises annual mean concentrations from 1990 to 1998 supplied by the emission protection authorities of the federal states with additional information on the region, year and site of measurement. The data are very heterogeneous with respect to sample size, the number of individual PAHs analyzed, place of origin and year.