Prevalence of diabetes in the Republic of Ireland: results from the National Health Survey (SLAN) 2007

Background: Current estimates of diabetes prevalence in the Republic of Ireland (RoI) are based on UK epidemiological studies. This study uses Irish data to describe the prevalence of doctor-diagnosed diabetes amongst all adults aged 18+ years and undiagnosed diabetes amongst those aged 45+ years. Methods: The survey of lifestyle attitudes and nutrition (SLAN) 2007 is based on a nationally representative sample of Irish adults aged 18+ years (n = 10,364). Self-reported doctor-diagnosed diabetes was recorded for respondents in the full sample. Diabetes medication use, measured height and weight, and non-fasting blood samples were variously recorded in sub-samples of younger (n = 967) and older (n = 1,207) respondents. Results: The prevalence of doctor-diagnosed diabetes amongst adults aged 18+ years was 3.5% (95% CI 3.1% - 3.9%). After adjustment for other explanatory variables; the risk of self-reported doctor-diagnosed diabetes was significantly related to age (p < 0.0001), employment status (p = 0.0003) and obesity (p = 0.0003). Amongst adults aged 45+ years, the prevalence of doctor-diagnosed diabetes was 8.9% (95% CI 7.3% -10.5%) and undiagnosed diabetes was 2.8% (95% CI 1.4% - 4.1%). This represented 31.2% of diabetes cases in this age group. Conclusion: Notwithstanding methodological differences, these prevalence estimates are consistent with those in the UK and France. However, the percentage of undiagnosed cases amongst adults aged 45+ years appears to be higher in the RoI. Increased efforts to improve early detection and population level interventions to address adverse diet and lifestyle factors are urgently needed

Inequalities in perceived health: a report on the all-Ireland social capital and health survey.

The concept of social capital and the ways in which social capital may be an important determinant of health is receiving increased attention from policy-makers. The Institute produced a report in 2004 based on its All Ireland Social Capital and Health Survey. The report explores how people feel about their health and highlights how this is linked with perceptions of the local social environment as well as to demographic and socio-economic circumstances and lifestyle behaviours

Inequalities in mortality. A report on all-Ireland mortality data.

This is the first all Ireland mortality report for 80 years and provides information on patterns of mortality by age, gender, geography and socio-economic class

Families of partial functions

The degree of disjunction, δ(F), of a family F of functions is the least cardinal τ such that every pair of functions in F agree on a set of cardinality less than τ. Suppose θ, μ, λ, κ are non-zero cardinals with θ &le; μ &le; λ. This paper is concerned with functions which map μ-sized subsets of λ into κ. We first show there is always a &lsquo;large&rsquo; family F of such functions satisfying δ(F) &le; θ. Next we determine the cardinalities of families F of such functions that are maximal with respect to δ(F) &le; θ

Kurtosis comparisons of the cauchy and double exponential distributions

We first describe a class of quantile-based kurtosis orderings on symmetric distributions that use density matching to match the scales of distributions before kurtosis comparisons are made. We then use the orderings to give a meaningful comparison of the kurtosis properties of the Cauchy and Double Exponential distributions. Since these distributions are often used as models for heavy-tailed distributions and there appears some confusion about their properties such a comparison should be useful

Families of partial representing sets

Assume GCH. Let κ, μ, Σ be cardinals, with κ infinite. Let be a family consisting of λ pairwise almost disjoint subsets of Σ each of size κ, whose union is Σ. In this note it is shown that for each μ with 1 &le; μ &le;min(λ, Σ), there is a &ldquo;large&rdquo; almost disjoint family of μ-sized subsets of Σ, each member of having non-empty intersection with at least μ members of the family

Unequal at birth: Inequalities in the occurrence of low birthweight babies in Ireland.

Inequalities and low birthweight - an Irish problem The Working Group on the National Anti-Poverty Strategy (NAPS) and Health has included low birthweight as one of three core targets to reduce health inequalities in Ireland. This target states that the gap in low birthweight rates between children from the lowest and the highest socio-economic groups should be reduced by 10% from the 2001 level, by 2007. This report found that babies born to parents who are unemployed were at over twice the risk of being low birthweight in 1999, when compared to those born to parents recorded as higher professionals. Teenage and unmarried mothers also had a significantly increased risk of having a low birthweight baby in that year

Kurtosis: A Critical Review

We critically review the development of the concept of kurtosis. We conclude that it is best to define kurtosis vaguely as the location- and scale-free movement of probability mass from the shoulders of a distribution into its center and tails and to recognize that it can be formalized in many ways. These formalizations are best expressed in terms of location- and scale-free partial orderings on distributions and the measures that preserve them. The role of scale-matching techniques and placement of shoulders in the formalizations that have appeared in the literature are emphasized