Synergistic effects of social determinants of health and race-ethnicity on 30-day all-cause readmission disparities: a retrospective cohort study

Objective
The objective of this study is to assess the effects of social determinants of health (SDOH) and race-ethnicity on readmission and to investigate the potential for geospatial clustering of patients with a greater burden of SDOH that could lead to a higher risk of readmission.

Design
A retrospective study of inpatients at five hospitals within Henry Ford Health (HFH) in Detroit, Michigan from November 2015 to December 2018 was conducted.

Setting
This study used an adult inpatient registry created based on HFH electronic health record data as the data source. A subset of the data elements in the registry was collected for data analyses that included readmission index, race-ethnicity, six SDOH variables and demographics and clinical-related variables.

Participants
The cohort was composed of 248 810 admission patient encounters with 156 353 unique adult patients between the study time period. Encounters were excluded if they did not qualify as an index admission for all payors based on the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service definition.

Main outcome measure
The primary outcome was 30-day all-cause readmission. This binary index was identified based on HFH internal data supplemented by external validated readmission data from the Michigan Health Information Network.

Results
Race-ethnicity and all SDOH were significantly associated with readmission. The effect of depression on readmission was dependent on race-ethnicity, with Hispanic patients having the strongest effect in comparison to either African Americans or non-Hispanic whites. Spatial analysis identified ZIP codes in the City of Detroit, Michigan, as over-represented for individuals with multiple SDOH.

Conclusions
There is a complex relationship between SDOH and race-ethnicity that must be taken into consideration when providing healthcare services. Insights from this study, which pinpoint the most vulnerable patients, could be leveraged to further improve existing models to predict risk of 30-day readmission for individuals in future work.

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Luglio 2024

Association between Triglyceride-Glucose Index and risk of all-cause and cardiovascular mortality in adults with prior cardiovascular disease: a cohort study using data from the US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 2007-2018

Objective
The association between the Triglyceride-Glucose (TyG) Index and mortality rates in patients with cardiovascular disease (CVD) remains unclear. This study investigates the association between the TyG index and the incidence of all-cause and CVD-specific mortality among individuals with a history of CVD.

Design
Population-based cohort study.

Setting
Data were sourced from the US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (2007–2018) and linked mortality data, with follow-up continuing until 31 December 2019.

Participants
The study population comprised 3422 individuals aged 20 years or older with a documented history of CVD.

Outcome measures
We examined the association between the TyG index and the risk of all-cause and cardiovascular mortality.

Results
Over a median follow-up of 5.79 years, 1030 deaths occurred, including 339 due to CVD. Cox regression analysis, adjusted for multiple confounders, showed that individuals in the highest TyG index quartile, compared with those in the lowest, had HRs of 0.76 (95% CI: 0.60 to 0.96) for all-cause mortality and 0.58 (95% CI: 0.39 to 0.89) for CVD mortality. There was a significant inverse relationship between higher TyG index levels and lower mortality risks. For each unit increase in the TyG index, the adjusted HRs for all-cause and CVD mortality decreased by 18% (HR 0.82; 95% CI: 0.71 to 0.94) and 27% (HR 0.73; 95% CI: 0.57 to 0.92), respectively.

Conclusions
TyG index values are negatively associated with all-cause and CVD mortality risks among individuals with previous CVD. Further interventional studies are needed to clarify the impact of TyG levels on cardiovascular health.

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Luglio 2024

Association between extremely high prognostic nutritional index and all-cause mortality in patients with coronary artery disease: secondary analysis of a prospective cohort study in China

Objectives
Decreased prognostic nutritional index (PNI) was associated with adverse outcomes in many clinical diseases. This study aimed to evaluate the relationship between baseline PNI value and adverse clinical outcomes in patients with coronary artery disease (CAD).

Design
The Personalized Antiplatelet Therapy According to CYP2C19 Genotype in Coronary Artery Disease (PRACTICE) study, a prospective cohort study of 15 250 patients with CAD, was performed from December 2016 to October 2021. The longest follow-up period was 5 years. This study was a secondary analysis of the PRACTICE study.

Setting
The study setting was Xinjiang Medical University Affiliated First Hospital in China.

Participants
Using the 50th and 90th percentiles of the PNI in the total cohort as two cut-off limits, we divided all participants into three groups: Q1 (PNI

Leggi
Giugno 2024

National Academies Report: COVID-19 Vaccines Don’t Cause Many Potential Harms

The COVID-19 vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna do not cause such conditions as female infertility, myocardial infarction, Bell palsy, or Guillain-Barré syndrome in adults, according to a report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine that reviewed evidence for potential harms for 19 conditions associated with these vaccines. There was not enough evidence involving children to draw conclusions about possible harms.

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Giugno 2024

Body mass index and all-cause mortality in HUNT and UK biobank studies: revised non-linear Mendelian randomisation analyses

Objectives
To estimate the shape of the causal relationship between body mass index (BMI) and mortality risk in a Mendelian randomisation framework.

Design
Mendelian randomisation analyses of two prospective population-based cohorts.

Setting
Individuals of European ancestries living in Norway or the UK.

Participants
56 150 participants from the Trøndelag Health Study (HUNT) in Norway and 366 385 participants from UK Biobank recruited by postal invitation.

Outcomes
All-cause mortality and cause-specific mortality (cardiovascular, cancer, non-cardiovascular non-cancer).

Results
A previously published non-linear Mendelian randomisation analysis of these data using the residual stratification method suggested a J-shaped association between genetically predicted BMI and mortality outcomes with the lowest mortality risk at a BMI of around 25 kg/m2. However, the ‘constant genetic effect’ assumption required by this method is violated. The reanalysis of these data using the more reliable doubly-ranked stratification method provided some indication of a J-shaped relationship, but with much less certainty as there was less precision in estimates at the lower end of the BMI distribution. Evidence for a harmful effect of reducing BMI at low BMI levels was only present in some analyses, and where present, only below 20 kg/m2. A harmful effect of increasing BMI for all-cause mortality was evident above 25 kg/m2, for cardiovascular mortality above 24 kg/m2, for cancer mortality above 30 kg/m2 and for non-cardiovascular non-cancer mortality above 26 kg/m2. In UK Biobank, the association between genetically predicted BMI and mortality at high BMI levels was stronger in women than in men.

Conclusion
This research challenges findings from previous conventional observational epidemiology and Mendelian randomisation investigations that the lowest level of mortality risk is at a BMI level of around 25 kg/m2. Our results provide some evidence that reductions in BMI will increase mortality risk for a small proportion of the population, and clear evidence that increases in BMI will increase mortality risk for those with BMI above 25 kg/m2.

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Maggio 2024