Publications by authors named "Vaartjes I"
Background: The adverse health effects of air pollution are well-established. Previous reviews have highlighted disparities in air pollution exposure between minoritized ethnic groups and majoritized ethnic groups. However, these reviews primarily focused on proximity to pollution sources rather than objectively measured concentrations.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Air pollution is a major risk factor for cardiovascular diseases and contributes to health disparities, particularly among minority ethnic groups, who often face higher exposure levels. Knowledge on whether the effect of air pollution on cardiovascular diseases differs between ethnic groups is crucial for identifying mechanisms underlying health disparities, ultimately informing targeted public health strategies and interventions. We explored differences in associations between air pollution and ischemic stroke and ischemic heart disease (IHD) for the six largest ethnic groups in the Netherlands.
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- - The study analyzed the relationship between social relationships and self-rated health (SRH) over 10 years, using data from the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project with 1,592 participants.
- - It found that lower levels of negative social support were linked to better SRH, particularly noting that negative support from family had a significant impact, especially among women.
- - The results also indicate that mental health may play a role in the correlation between social support and SRH, suggesting that feelings of depression could influence a person's self-rated health.
Background: The use of urban green spaces differs by social characteristics, including gender, ethnicity, and socioeconomic position. We examined motives, means and prerequisites to visit green space of marginalised populations with high cardiometabolic risk in the Netherlands, namely women with a Turkish or South Asian Surinamese background residing in disadvantaged neighbourhoods.
Methods: We conducted six focus group discussions in two Dutch cities.
Article Synopsis
- A study aimed to compare ischemic stroke incidence rates between rural and urban areas in the Netherlands, focusing on younger adults (15-49 years) and older adults (50+ years).
- Researchers analyzed hospital data from 1998 to 2018, examining 23,720 younger patients and 369,107 older patients, and categorized municipalities based on urbanization and socioeconomic status.
- Results showed that younger adults in rural areas had a 5% higher risk of ischemic stroke compared to those in urban settings, while older adults had a 3% lower risk, highlighting significant age-specific disparities in stroke incidence.
Article Synopsis
- This study investigates how changes in the food environment affect cardiovascular disease (CVD) risks over time among Dutch adults aged 35 and older.
- Researchers analyzed data from over 4.6 million individuals between 2004 and 2018, correlating food environment healthiness and the presence of various food retailers with rates of hospitalization and mortality due to different types of CVD.
- Findings indicate that a healthier food environment correlates with lower hospitalization and death rates from CVD, highlighting the importance of local food availability on health outcomes, especially for younger and urban populations.
Echocardiographic and Clinical Outcomes of Concomitant Secondary Chordal Cutting to Surgical Myectomy in Hypertrophic Obstructive Cardiomyopathy: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.
Thorac Cardiovasc Surg
November 2024
In patients who underwent surgical myectomy for hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy (HOCM), additional mitral valve repair may offer additional benefits in terms of further reducing left ventricular outflow tract (LVOT) gradients, systolic anterior motion (SAM), and mitral regurgitation (MR). We performed a systematic review of the literature to evaluate the evidence of surgical myectomy with additional secondary chordal cutting in patients with HOCM. A systematic literature search in MEDLINE and EMBASE was performed until April 2024.
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- Genome-wide association studies have found numerous genetic loci linked to glycemic traits, but connecting these loci to specific genes and biological pathways remains a challenge.
- Researchers conducted meta-analyses of exome-array studies across four glycemic traits, analyzing data from over 144,000 participants, which led to the identification of coding variant associations in more than 60 genes.
- The study revealed significant pathways related to insulin secretion, zinc transport, and fatty acid metabolism, enhancing understanding of glycemic regulation and making data available for further research.
Temporal Trends in Air Pollution Exposure across Socioeconomic Groups in The Netherlands.
Int J Environ Res Public Health
July 2024
Air pollution exposure has been linked to detrimental health outcomes. While cross-sectional studies have demonstrated socioeconomic disparities in air pollution exposure, longitudinal evidence on these disparities remains limited. The current study investigates trends in residential air pollution exposure across socioeconomic groups in the Netherlands from 2014 to 2019.
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- A long-term study evaluated the outcomes of different heart procedures: on-pump CABG, off-pump CABG, and PCI over a 20-year period, using data from trials conducted between 1998 and 2000.
- Findings showed no significant differences in overall mortality rates between on-pump and off-pump CABG or PCI and off-pump CABG.
- However, off-pump CABG patients had fewer re-intervention procedures compared to those who underwent PCI.
Article Synopsis
- Clinical guidelines recommend lifestyle and medication changes for managing cardiovascular risks in coronary heart disease (CHD) patients, yet these remain difficult to achieve, especially for those with lower education levels.
- The SURF CHD II study, which surveyed 13,884 patients across 29 countries, aimed to identify how education level impacts the secondary prevention of CHD concerning risk factor management and treatment.
- Results showed that patients with secondary or tertiary education generally performed better in meeting health targets and using medications compared to those with only primary education, indicating a link between education and effective management of CHD.
Article Synopsis
- The research evaluates the shift from traditional clinical trial design for heart failure (HF) to a data-driven approach, utilizing natural language processing to analyze trial eligibility criteria.
- Phase III trials for HF were examined to identify common inclusion and exclusion criteria, finding that only about 20% of registry patients were eligible for these trials.
- Over time, the trials have become more restrictive, with a significant decline in patient eligibility from 40% in earlier years to 19% in recent years, highlighting the need for a better design framework for future trials.
Article Synopsis
- - The study looked at how air pollution and green space affect cardiometabolic risk in Dutch children aged 5 to 17, using data from three large cohorts totaling 13,822 participants.
- - Researchers used statistical models to analyze the impact of air pollutants like nitrogen oxides (NO) and elemental carbon (EC) on cardiometabolic health, finding that higher levels of these pollutants were linked to increased health risks in one of the cohorts.
- - The study also explored the relationship between green space density and health, discovering that more green space in wider areas (2000 meters) was associated with lower health risk scores in two of the cohorts, while no significant relationship was found in smaller areas (500 meters).
Background: Acute respiratory infections can trigger acute myocardial infarction. We aimed to quantify the association between laboratory-confirmed influenza infection and acute myocardial infarction, particularly in patients with and without known coronary artery disease.
Methods: This observational, registry-based, self-controlled case series study evaluated the association between laboratory-confirmed influenza infection and occurrence of acute myocardial infarction.
Article Synopsis
- Green space exposure is linked to lower blood pressure (BP) and reduced risk of hypertension, but concrete reasons for this effect are unclear.
- A study of 719 adults in Guangzhou, China, found that greater distance from green spaces correlated with higher systolic BP, with significant differences based on how far individuals lived from parks.
- The relationship between green space distance and BP was partially explained by mental health, while factors like air pollution, physical activity, and weight did not significantly mediate this connection.
Article Synopsis
- The study analyzed the link between neighborhood characteristics that promote obesity and various heart disease risk factors in over 183,000 adults from five Dutch cohort studies.
- Specifically, researchers calculated the OBCT index, assessing how urban environments impact body weight, blood pressure, and cholesterol levels.
- Results indicated that a higher OBCT score was tied to increases in BMI, higher cholesterol levels, and greater rates of overweight/obesity and hypertension.
Background: Cardiovascular disease (CVD) and cancer are the two leading causes of death worldwide. Given their high prevalence, it is important to understand the disease burden of cancer mortality in CVD patients.
Objective: We aimed to evaluate whether patients with incident CVD have a higher risk of malignancy-related mortality, compared to the general population without CVD.
Objective: Lower extremity peripheral arterial disease (PAD) is a severe condition that increases the risk of major adverse cardiovascular events, major adverse limb events, and all cause mortality. This study aimed to investigate the mortality risk among females and males hospitalised for the first time with lower extremity PAD.
Methods: Three cohorts of patients who were admitted for the first time with lower extremity PAD in 2007 - 2010, 2011 - 2014, and 2015 - 2018 were constructed.
Article Synopsis
- Obesity is linked to serious health issues like diabetes and heart disease, leading to the development of the OBCT index, which evaluates environmental factors influencing obesity by combining food and physical activity components.
- The study aimed to explore how the OBCT index correlates with body mass index (BMI) across a large Dutch population and attempted to enhance the index using various analytical methods.
- Findings showed a significant but weak connection between the OBCT index and BMI, with the association influenced by demographic factors, and improvements to the index also resulted in only modest increases in explained variance for BMI.
Introduction: Data linkage for health research purposes enables the answering of countless new research questions, is said to be cost effective and less intrusive than other means of data collection. Nevertheless, health researchers are currently dealing with a complicated, fragmented, and inconsistent regulatory landscape with regard to the processing of data, and progress in health research is hindered.
Aim: We designed a qualitative study to assess what different stakeholders perceive as ethical and legal obstacles to data linkage for health research purposes, and how these obstacles could be overcome.
Article Synopsis
- - The study analyzed air pollution exposure across different ethnic and socioeconomic groups in the Netherlands, finding that minority ethnic groups experienced consistently higher levels of pollution compared to the ethnic Dutch population.
- - Data collected from over 17 million residents showed that exposure to nitrogen oxides (NO) and particulate matter (PM) was significantly higher (3-44% for NO and 1-9% for PM) in minority groups, particularly impacting those in the lowest socioeconomic status.
- - The findings indicate environmental injustice linked to social characteristics, highlighting a need for further research into the health consequences and underlying factors contributing to these disparities in air pollution exposure.
Article Synopsis
- The study aimed to understand the motivations and factors influencing healthy lifestyle choices among South-Asian Surinamese individuals for creating better support strategies.
- Researchers utilized a mixed-methods approach involving focus groups, questionnaires, and professional interviews to gather diverse insights, with participation from 60 individuals across various groups.
- Findings indicated shared motivations for healthy living but highlighted a need for more culturally sensitive healthcare practices, as professionals struggled with patient adherence, suggesting improvements in lifestyle interventions could benefit from a supportive social network and gradual changes.
Background: We explored the association between use of renin-angiotensin system inhibitors and beta-blockers, with mortality/morbidity in 5 previously identified clusters of patients with heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF).
Methods And Results: We analyzed 20,980 patients with HFpEF from the Swedish HF registry, phenotyped into young-low comorbidity burden (12%), atrial fibrillation-hypertensive (32%), older-atrial fibrillation (24%), obese-diabetic (15%), and a cardiorenal cluster (17%). In Cox proportional hazard models with inverse probability weighting, there was no heterogeneity in the association between renin-angiotensin system inhibitor use and cluster membership for any of the outcomes: cardiovascular (CV) mortality, all-cause mortality, HF hospitalisation, CV hospitalisation, or non-CV hospitalisation.
Background: Effective management of major cardiovascular risk factors is of great importance to reduce mortality from cardiovascular disease (CVD). The Survey of Risk Factors in Coronary Heart Disease (SURF CHD) II study is a clinical audit of the recording and management of CHD risk factors. It was developed in collaboration with the European Association of Preventive Cardiology and the European Society of Cardiology (ESC).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAims: To provide a comprehensive overview of the current evidence on objectively measured neighbourhood built environment exposures in relation to cardiovascular disease (CVD) events in adults.
Methods And Results: We searched seven databases for systematic reviews on associations between objectively measured long-term built environmental exposures, covering at least one domain (i.e.