5,132 results match your criteria: "School of Epidemiology[Affiliation]"

Background: Survivors of intimate partner violence (IPV) often face increased incidents of violence during stressful life events (SLEs) such as economic recessions, environmental disasters, and pandemics. These events can diminish the effectiveness of both formal (e.g.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • West Nile Virus (WNV) poses a significant global health risk, expanding into new regions due to climate change enhancing mosquito activity, leading to year-round virus transmission.
  • Recent advancements in genomic technologies have improved understanding of WNV's behavior and potential treatment options, yet the lack of an approved vaccine means management relies heavily on supportive care for severe cases.
  • There is a pressing need for innovative vector control methods and adaptive public health strategies that integrate research, policy, and community efforts to effectively combat WNV's evolving challenges.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Reversible cerebral vasoconstriction syndrome (RCVS) is a rare neurological disorder characterized by transient constriction and dilation of cerebral arteries, leading to severe headaches and neurological deficits. This case report describes a 41-year-old woman with chronic anemia, acute chronic kidney disease, type 2 diabetes mellitus, and rheumatoid arthritis who developed RCVS following transfusion of packed red blood cells (PRBCs). She experienced sudden-onset seizures and a thunderclap headache 5 days post-transfusion.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Key challenges in epidemiology: embracing open science.

J Clin Epidemiol

November 2024

Metaresearch and Open Science Program, University of Ottawa Heart Institute, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada; School of Epidemiology and Public Health, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

Open science is a movement that fosters research transparency, reproducibility, and equity. Open science has been put forward by numerous stakeholders in the research ecosystem as a key science policy goal, with the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization creating recommendations on open science and aligning these with UN Sustainability Goals. Open science practices are not standard to epidemiology despite their potential value to the field and especially during disease outbreaks.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Review of non-invasive biomarkers as a tool for exposure characterization in human health risk assessments.

J Toxicol Environ Health B Crit Rev

February 2025

Risk Sciences International, Ottawa, Canada.

Blood and urine are historically the most frequent matrices used for measuring chemical levels in human biomonitoring studies. As biomonitoring programs are refreshed, consideration of specific priority substances and specific population targets provide opportunities for inclusion of alternative non- or minimally invasive matrices. This review describes methods used in health risk assessment to characterize exposure and risk based upon biomarkers from noninvasive matrices other than urine or blood, including human milk, hair, fingernails, toenails, exhaled breath, deciduous teeth, sweat, semen, meconium, and feces.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Trends in physical fitness among Lithuanian adolescents aged 11-17 years between 1992 and 2022.

J Epidemiol Community Health

November 2024

Alliance for Research in Exercise, Nutrition and Activity (ARENA), Allied Health and Human Performance, University of South Australia, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia

Article Synopsis
  • A study was conducted to assess physical fitness trends among Lithuanian adolescents from 1992 to 2022, including data from nearly 18,000 individuals aged 11-17.
  • Significant declines were observed in various fitness tests like the 20-m shuttle run and bent arm hang, while some improvements were noted in balance and short shuttle run performance.
  • The results highlight a worrying trend of decreased health-related fitness, especially among low performers, indicating a need for national health promotion policies to address these issues.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Testing the limits: can enhanced external validity promote translation?

EBioMedicine

December 2024

Blueprint Translational Research Group, Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada; Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine, University of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada; School of Epidemiology and Public Health, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada; Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine, The Ottawa Hospital, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Electronic address:

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Preprints are scientific manuscripts that are made available on open-access servers but are not yet peer-reviewed. Although preprints are becoming more prevalent, uptake is not optimal. Understanding researchers' opinions and attitudes toward preprints is valuable to optimize their use.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Fresh produce prone to microbial contamination is a potential reservoir for antimicrobial-resistant bacteria (ARB) and antimicrobial resistance genes (ARGs), posing challenges to food safety and public health. This systematic review aims to comprehensively assess the prevalence of bacterial pathogens and the incidence of ARB/ARGs in fresh produce and agro-ecosystems across South Asia. Twenty-two relevant studies published between 2012 and 2022 from three major scientific databases and the grey literature were identified.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Consumption of sugary drinks (SD) among children and adolescents is a prevalent public health issue both within Canada and worldwide. This problem is exacerbated by the powerful marketing of such beverages to youth, which is known to influence a wide range of dietary behaviours.

Methods: A cross-sectional, secondary analysis of the International Food Policy Survey Youth Wave 2019 was conducted to assess the relationship between self-reported exposure to SD marketing within the past 30 days or SD brand advertisements and brand preference and brand recall among youth aged 10-17 from Australia, Canada, Chile, Mexico, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Persons with schizophrenia are excluded from psychedelic-assisted therapy due to concerns about the risk of triggering or worsening psychosis. However, there is limited meta-analytic data on the risk of psychedelic-induced psychosis in individuals with pre-existing psychotic disorders.

Methods: We conducted a systematic review, meta-analysis, and overview of reviews to assess the incidence of psychedelic-induced psychosis and symptom exacerbation in schizophrenia.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background:  Although most patients with atrial fibrillation (AF) receiving a direct oral anticoagulant (DOAC) do not require drug concentration measurements, there are situations where such information could be useful. Existing guidance documents provide usual on-therapy ranges for drug concentrations, but these have important limitations.

Methods:  This is a systematic review and meta-analysis of studies reporting trough and peak levels of DOAC regimens approved for stroke prevention in AF.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Virtual health care usage surged post-COVID-19, yet personal experiences of patients and providers have not been widely studied.
  • This analysis focuses on how patients and providers in a kidney care service in northern British Columbia experienced virtual health care changes, particularly due to the pandemic.
  • The research highlighted themes such as improved convenience for patients and the importance of communication in care networks, while also addressing concerns about trust and assessment in virtual encounters.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Health guideline developers engage with interested people and groups to ensure that guidelines and their recommendations are relevant and useful to those who will be affected by them. These 'interest-holders' include patients, payers/purchasers of health services, payers of health research, peer review editors, product makers, programme managers, policymakers, providers, principal investigators, and the public. The Guidelines International Network (GIN) and McMaster University Guideline Development Checklist describes 146 steps of the guideline process organized into 18 topics.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

People who use wheelchairs.

CMAJ

November 2024

School of Epidemiology and Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ont.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The relationships among neighbourhood greenness, physical activity, and mental health are unclear; therefore, we examined the independent and synergistic associations between neighbourhood greenness and self-rated mental health among a nationally representative sample of urban-dwelling adults in Canada (18-79 years) from the 2007-2019 Canadian Health Measures Survey ( = 12,531). We assessed neighbourhood greenness using the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index within a 500-meter radius of participants' residential postal codes. We measured physical activity using accelerometers and determined adherence to the recommended 150-minutes of moderate-to-vigorous intensity physical activity (MVPA) per week.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) emerged in December 2019, prompting the implementation of a "zero-COVID" policy in Mainland China. The easing of this policy in December 2022 led to a surge in COVID cases, which was believed to significantly increase antibiotic usage, potentially due to antibiotic misuse or increased coinfections. Our study aimed to compare antibiotic consumption and patterns before and after this policy adjustment.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Geriatric rehabilitation is a multidisciplinary intervention that promotes functional recovery in older adults. Our objective was to assess the efficacy of geriatric rehabilitation in inpatient and geriatric day hospital settings.

Methods: We searched MEDLINE, EMBASE, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, PsycINFO, PEDro and AgeLine from inception to September 30, 2022 for randomized controlled trials (RCTs) including older adults (age ≥ 65 years) undergoing geriatric rehabilitation (inpatient or day hospital) with a usual care comparator group.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • People living with HIV (PLWH) face increased mortality risks from air pollution due to chronic inflammation and immune dysfunction, a link that has not been widely studied.
  • A systematic review analyzed nine studies, primarily from China, revealing that long-term exposure to pollutants like particulate matter significantly correlates with higher AIDS-related and overall mortality rates in PLWH, with certain populations being more susceptible.
  • The findings indicate that targeted interventions to lessen air pollution exposure could benefit vulnerable groups, emphasizing the need for further research in this area.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Physical fitness in childhood and adolescence is associated with a variety of health outcomes and is a powerful marker of current and future health. However, inconsistencies in tests and protocols limit international monitoring and surveillance. The objective of the study was to seek international consensus on a proposed, evidence-informed, Youth Fitness International Test (YFIT) battery and protocols for health monitoring and surveillance in children and adolescents aged 6-18 years.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • A study was conducted to investigate whether maternal vaccination with mRNA COVID-19 vaccines during the first trimester of pregnancy is linked to a higher rate of major congenital anomalies in newborns.
  • The research utilized data from over 174,000 live births in Ontario, Canada, comparing infants born to vaccinated mothers with those born to unvaccinated mothers and their older siblings for better analysis.
  • Results indicated that the incidence of major congenital anomalies was slightly lower in vaccinated mothers’ infants (24.3 per 1000 live births) compared to unvaccinated mothers’ infants (26.5 per 1000 live births), suggesting no significant increased risk associated with vaccination during early pregnancy.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Canadian Blood Services changed their deferral policy for HIV prevention treatments (PrEP/PEP) from a time-based approach to focusing on sexual risk behaviors, causing changes in donor deferrals.
  • Data analysis over 22 months showed a stable rate of PEP deferrals while PrEP deferrals significantly increased from 5.9 to 12.4 per 100,000 donations. Many donors deferred were younger males or first-time users.
  • The conclusion indicates that the new criteria slightly raised PrEP deferrals, but the full impact might not be captured as potential donors could be self-deferring due to increased awareness and usage of PrEP.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF