Clinical Trial Service Unit

About: Clinical Trial Service Unit is a based out in . It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Stroke. The organization has 428 authors who have published 1387 publications receiving 181920 citations.

Persistent infection and vascular disease : a systematic review

Abstract: More than 150 epidemiological or clinical studies have reported on associations between vascular disease and the presence of certain persistent bacterial and viral agents, or of clinical conditions (e.g., periodontal disease) that are associated with persistent infection. This article provides a review of such studies, particularly in relation to Helicobacter pylori, Chlamydia pneumoniae, dental disease and cytomegalovirus (CMV), as well as references to possible mechanisms. The association between coronary heart disease and H. pylori or between heart disease and dental disease may be accounted for by residual confounding. Although markers of C. pneumoniae infection are around twenty times more common in atherosclerotic plaques than in disease-free blood vessels, the sequence of infection and disease is uncertain. For CMV, a limited number of patients with classic atherosclerotic coronary heart disease have been investigated in seroepidemiological studies. For all such agents, better and larger seroepidem...

Tobacco: The growing epidemic in China

Abstract: Summary China, with 20% of the world's population, produces and consumes about 30% of the world's cigarettes, and already suffers about a million deaths a year from tobacco. This is more than in any other country, and the hazards are expected to increase substantially during the next few decades, over and above the effects of demographic changes, as a delayed effect of the large increase in cigarette use between the 1950s and 1990s and of a further sharp increase in cigarette consumption since 1999. In developed countries cigarette smoking became popular during the first half of the twentieth century, but the main increase in tobacco deaths was not seen until several decades later, during the second half of the century. In the US, mean cigarette consumption per adult in 1910, 1930 and 1950 was 1, 4 and 10 a day, respectively, after which it remained fairly constant for a few decades. As a delayed result of this increase in cigarette smoking, the proportion of all US deaths at ages 35–69 attributed to tobacco rose over the next few decades from ‘‘only'' about 12% in 1950 to 33% in 1990. In Chinese men, the pattern of increase in cigarette smoking that had been seen between 1910 and 1950 in the US was repeated 40years later between 1952 and 1992. In most parts of China women now smoke far less than men. Mean cigarette consumption per Chinese man in 1952, 1972 and 1992 was 1, 4 and 10 per day, respectively, after which it leveled off for a few years, then continued to rise. Nationwide retrospective and prospective studies in China indicate that by 1990 tobacco already caused about 12% of all male deaths at ages 35–69, and by 2030 it will probably cause about one third of them, unless there is widespread cessation among those who already smoke. Although the overall hazard per cigarette smoker may be about the same in China as elsewhere, the chief diseases by which tobacco caused death in the 1990s were very different in China, with about half of the tobacco deaths involving emphysema rather than cardiovascular disease. The patterns of tobacco death also differed between one region and another, and may change substantially over time as a result of changes in diet and other factors. Large prospective epidemiological studies are now in place to monitor the evolution of the growing tobacco epidemic in China and elsewhere over the next few decades.

Gender-specific association between tobacco smoking and central obesity among 0.5 million Chinese people: the China Kadoorie Biobank Study.

Abstract: © 2015 Lv et al. Objectives: Lifestyle factors are well-known important modifiable risk factors for obesity; the association between tobacco smoking and central obesity, however, is largely unknown in the Chinese population. This study examined the relationship between smoking and central obesity in 0.5 million Chinese adults, a population with a low prevalence of general obesity, but a high prevalence of central obesity. Subjects: A total of 487,527 adults (200,564 males and 286,963 females), aged 30-79 years, were enrolled in the baseline survey of the China Kadoorie Biobank (CKB) Study conducted during 2004-2008. Waist circumference (WC) and WC/height ratio (WHtR) were used as measures of central obesity. Results: The prevalence of regular smokers was significantly higher among males (60.6%) than among females (2.2%). The prevalence of central obesity increased with age and BMI levels, with a significant gender difference (females>males). Of note, almost all obese adults (99.4%) were centrally obese regardless of gender. In multivariable regression analyses, adjusting for age, education, physical activity, alcohol use and survey site, regular smoking was inversely associated with BMI in males (standardized regression coefficients, β= -0.093, p<0.001) and females (β= -0.025, p<0.001). Of interest, in the BMI stratification analyses in 18 groups, all βs of regular smoking for WHtR were positive in both genders; the βs showed a significantly greater increasing trend with increasing BMI in males than in females. In the analyses with model adjustment for BMI, the positive associations between regular smoking and WHtR were stronger in males (β= 0.021, p<0.001) than in females (β= 0.008, p<0.001) (p<0.001 for gender difference).WC showed considerably consistent results. Conclusions: The data indicate that tobacco smoking is an important risk factor for central obesity, but the association is gender-specific and depends on the adjustment for general obesity.