Prevalence, characteristics, and risk factors of elevated triglyceride levels in US children.

Limited information is available on the epidemiology of hypertriglyceridemia (HTG; 150-499 mg/dL) and severe HTG (SHTG; >500 mg/dL) in children. This study estimates the prevalence of HTG and SHTG, evaluates factors that may be associated with these conditions, and describes the use of dyslipidemic agents in children. The sample included children 12 to 19 years old who participated in National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2001-2008 (n = 3248) and children 5 to 19 years of age who were part of a large managed-care claims database in the United States (n = 65 258).

The impact of morbid obesity and bariatric surgery on comorbid conditions: a comprehensive examination of comorbidities in an employed population.

Objective: Find conditions with significantly different prevalence among employees diagnosed with morbid obesity (DMO). Examine the effect of bariatric surgery on the prevalence of all categories of comorbid conditions after surgery.

Methods: This large employer retrospective database analysis used matching to create two cohorts: Those with a DMO and those without.

An intervention to promote appropriate management of allergies in a heavy manufacturing workforce: evaluating health and productivity outcomes.

This work presents the evaluation of a first-of-its-kind intervention to improve the management of allergies among workers in a largely blue-collar industrial setting. This intervention implemented eight educational strategies focusing on appropriate medication use in the context of a controlled, nonrandomized, pre-post quasi-experimental study design. Program implementation occurred during summer 2001, with change assessed by means of measures of health and productivity, developed from employee surveys timed to occur at the height of the spring and fall allergy seasons, and measures of contemporaneous adverse events developed from administrative databases.

The burden of allergies--and the capacity of medications to reduce this burden-in a heavy manufacturing environment.

This article addresses the observational findings of the first systematic study undertaken by a manufacturer to address the impact of allergies and use of allergy medications on health, safety, and productivity. It provides background for 3 other papers from the same project, including an evaluation of an intervention to promote appropriate medication use among affected employees, which appear in this issue. The observational data are developed on 10,714 employees from: 1) 2 employee surveys; 2) administrative databases monitoring employee absenteeism, workers compensation, short-term disability, and group health.