Associations between sarcopenia with asthmatic prevalence, lung function and comorbidity

Background Sarcopenia was listed as a treatment trait in behavioral/risk factors of severe asthma, but studies between asthma and sarcopenia were scant. This study plans to determine the associations between sarcopenia with asthmatic prevalence, symptoms, lung function and comorbidity. Methods 15404 individuals from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study(CHARLS) and 10263 individuals from Study on global AGEing and adult health(SAGE) in China were included in this study. Four components of this study were respectively used to assess bidirectional association in the prevalence between sarcopenia with asthma, and estimate the relationships between sarcopenia with asthmatic symptoms, lung function and comorbidity via generalized additive models. The 10-item Center for Epidemiological Studies–Depression Scale≥12 scores was classified as depression in CHARLS. Results In CHARLS and SAGE, the prevalence of sarcopenia in asthmatics was higher than those without asthma. Asthmatics with sarcopenia had a significantly increased prevalence of severe shortness of breath(sarcopenia yes vs no, adjusted OR=3.71, 95%CI: 1.43-9.60) and airway obstruction in SAGE(sarcopenia yes vs no, adjusted OR=6.82, 95%CI: 2.54-18.34) and an obvious reduction of PEF in CHARLS and SAGE(sarcopenia yes vs no, adjusted RR=0.86, 95%CI: 0.82-0.91) compared to asthmatics without sacropenia. The presence of sarcopenia was positively associated with the prevalence of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease(sarcopenia yes vs no, adjusted OR=5.76, 95%CI:2.01-16.5) and depression(sarcopenia yes vs no, adjusted OR=1.87, 95%CI:1.11-3.14) in asthmatics. Conclusions Our findings indicated that sarcopenia partakes in the development of asthma by affecting lung function and comorbidity and maybe considered a treatable trait of asthma management.

Polygenic risk prediction based on singular value decomposition with applications to alcohol use disorder

Background/aim The polygenic risk score (PRS) shows promise as a potentially effective approach to summarize genetic risk for complex diseases such as alcohol use disorder that is influenced by a combination of multiple variants, each of which has a very small effect. Yet, conventional PRS methods tend to over-adjust confounding factors in the discovery sample and thus have low power to predict the phenotype in the target sample. This study aims to address this important methodological issue. Methods This study proposed a new method to construct PRS by (1) approximating the polygenic model using a few principal components selected based on eigen-correlation in the discovery data; and (2) conducting principal component projection on the target data. Secondary data analysis was conducted on two large scale databases: the Study of Addiction: Genetics and Environment (SAGE; discovery data) and the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health; target data) to compare performance of the conventional and proposed methods. Result and conclusion The results show that the proposed method has higher prediction power and can handle participants from different ancestry backgrounds. We also provide practical recommendations for setting the linkage disequilibrium (LD) and p value thresholds.

Child Maltreatment and Substance Use: A Behavior Genetic Analysis

Child maltreatment is a pervasive social problem often perpetuated by family members and is related to a wide array of negative life outcomes. Although substance use is an outcome commonly associated with experiences of child maltreatment, not all individuals who experience maltreatment struggle with such issues. Many individuals can positively adapt to experiences of maltreatment based on levels of resilience and susceptibility. Research suggests that genetic differences may partly explain why negative outcomes develop for some, but not for others. Few studies have examined the extent to which genetic and environmental factors influence the longitudinal association between child maltreatment and varying forms of substance use, leaving a fundamental gap in our current understanding of this association. The current study aims to address this gap by analyzing a sample of twins from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health). Findings from a series of univariate and bivariate biometric models reveal that the longitudinal associations between maltreatment, cigarette use, and marijuana use are accounted for by additive genetic and nonshared environmental factors. Moreover, the magnitude of the contribution varies across unique subgroups of cigarette and marijuana use. Directions for future research and theoretical implications are discussed.

Structural Racism and Quantitative Causal Inference: A Life Course Mediation Framework for Decomposing Racial Health Disparities

Quantitative studies of racial health disparities often use static measures of self-reported race and conventional regression estimators, which critics argue is inconsistent with social-constructivist theories of race, racialization, and racism. We demonstrate an alternative counterfactual approach to explain how multiple racialized systems dynamically shape health over time, examining racial inequities in cardiometabolic risk in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. This framework accounts for the dynamics of time-varying confounding and mediation that is required in operationalizing a “race” variable as part of a social process ( racism) rather than a separable, individual characteristic. We decompose the observed disparity into three types of effects: a controlled direct effect (“unobserved racism”), proportions attributable to interaction (“racial discrimination”), and pure indirect effects (“emergent discrimination”). We discuss the limitations of counterfactual approaches while highlighting how they can be combined with critical theories to quantify how interlocking systems produce racial health inequities.

Childhood Disadvantage and Adult Functional Status: Do Early-Life Exposures Jeopardize Healthy Aging?

Objectives To examine whether childhood disadvantage is associated with later-life functional status and identify mediating factors. Methods Unique and additive effects of five childhood domains on functional status were assessed at baseline (2006) and over time (2006–2016) in a sample of 13,894 adults from the Health and Retirement Study (>50 years). Adult health behaviors and socioeconomic status (SES) were tested as mediators. Results Respondents exposed to multiple childhood disadvantages (OR = .694) as well as low childhood SES (OR = .615), chronic diseases (OR = .694), impairments (OR = .599), and risky adolescent behaviors (OR = .608) were less likely to be free of functional disability by baseline. Over time, these unique and additive effects of childhood disadvantage increased the hazard odds of eventually developing functional disability (e.g., additive effect: hOR = 1.261). Adult health behaviors and SES mediated some of these effects. Discussion Given the enduring effects of childhood disadvantage, policies to promote healthy aging should reduce exposure to childhood disadvantage.

Relationship between vulnerability and life satisfaction in older population in Russia

The article examines the relationship between various components of vulnerability and life satisfaction among older people in Russia. Empirically, the study bases on data from the first wave of the WHO Study on Global Ageing and Adult Health (SAGE) for 2007–2010. The analysis showed that physical vulnerability, or frailty, is associated with a significantly lower level of life satisfaction of the older population. At the same time, there are differences in this relationship between age groups, and an increase in the physical vulnerability of individuals aged 75–89 years old reduces their subjective well-being to a greater extent in comparison with the group of individuals aged 60–74 years old. The financial situation of individuals also plays a significant role: lack of income to cover daily needs negatively affects subjective well-being. Socializing with friends is another predictor of life satisfaction in older age.

Contextualizing Educational Disparities in Health: Variations by Race/Ethnicity, Nativity, and County-Level Characteristics

Educational disparities in health are well documented, yet the education–health relationship is inconsistent across racial/ethnic and nativity groups. These inconsistencies may arise from characteristics of the early life environments in which individuals attain their education. We evaluate this possibility by investigating (1) whether educational disparities in cardiometabolic risk vary by race/ethnicity and nativity among Black, Hispanic, and White young adults; (2) the extent to which racial/ethnic-nativity differences in the education–health relationship are contingent on economic, policy, and social characteristics of counties of early life residence; and (3) the county characteristics associated with the best health at higher levels of education for each racial/ethnic-nativity group. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, we find that Black young adults who achieve high levels of education exhibit worse health across a majority of contexts relative to their White and Hispanic counterparts. Additionally, we observe more favorable health at higher levels of education across almost all contexts for White individuals. For all other racial/ethnic-nativity groups, the relationship between education and health depends on the characteristics of the early life counties of residence. Findings highlight place-based factors that may contribute to the development of racial/ethnic and nativity differences in the education–health relationship among U.S. young adults.