35 research outputs found
Suicide in Scottish military veterans: a 30-year retrospective cohort study
Background:
Although reassuring data on suicide risk in UK veterans of the 1982 Falklands conflict and 1991 Gulf conflict have been published, there have been few studies on long-term overall suicide risk in UK veterans.
Aims:
To examine the risk of suicide in a broad population-based cohort of veterans in Scotland, irrespect ive of length of service or exposure to conflict, in comparison with people having no record of military service.
Methods:
A retrospective 30-year cohort study of 56205 veterans born 1945â85 and 172741 matched non-veterans, using Cox proportional hazard models to compare the risk of suicide and fatal self-harm overall, by sex, birth cohort, length of service and year of recruitment.
Results:
There were 267 (0.48%) suicides in the veterans compared with 918 (0.53%) in non-veterans. The difference was not statistically significant overall [adjusted hazard ratio (HR) 0.99; 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.86â1.13]. The incidence was lower in younger veterans and higher in veterans aged over 40. Early service leavers were at non-significantly increased risk (adjusted HR 1.13; 95% CI 0.91â1.40) but only in the older age groups. Women veterans had a significantly higher risk of suicide than non-veteran women (adjusted HR 2.44; 95% CI 1.32â4.51, P < 0.01) and comparable risk to veteran men. Methods of suicide did not differ significantly between veterans and non-veterans, for either sex.
Conclusions:
The Scottish Veterans Health Study adds to the emerging body of evidence that there is no overall difference in long-term risk of suicide between veterans and non-veterans in the UK. However, female veterans merit further study
Witnessing history: a personal view of half a century in public health
Former Chief Medical Officer Sir Kenneth Calman recently celebrated 50
years in medicine. It was a period which saw the evolution of the public
health agenda from communicable diseases to diseases of lifestyle, the
change from a hospital-orientated health service to one dominated by
community-based services, and the increasing recognition of inequalities as a
major determinant of health. This paper documents selected highlights from
his career including the Aberdeen typhoid outbreak, AIDS, bovine spongiform encephalopathy,
foot and mouth disease, radioactive fallout, the invention of computerised tomography and
magnetic resonance imaging, and draws parallels between the development of the modern
understanding of public health and the theoretical background to the science 100 years earlier
Peripheral arterial disease in Scottish military veterans: a retrospective cohort study of 57 000 veterans and 173 000 matched non-veterans
Background:
While traumatic limb loss in military personnel is widely known, the threat posed by peripheral arterial disease (PAD) in those who have served is less well recognized. The aim of our study was to examine the risk of PAD in a Scotland-wide cohort of veterans who served between 1960 and 2012.
Methods:
Retrospective 30-year cohort study of 56 205 veterans born 1945â85, and 172 741 non-veterans, matched for age, sex and area of residence, using Cox proportional hazard models to examine the association between veteran status, birth cohort, length of service and risk of PAD leading to hospitalization or death.
Results:
Overall, veterans were at increased risk of PAD compared with non-veterans, unadjusted hazard ratio (HR) = 1.46, 95% confidence intervals (CI): 1.33â1.60, P < 0.001. The highest risk was in veterans born between 1950 and 1954, HR = 1.76, 95% CI: 1.50â2.07, P < 0.001, and in those with the shortest service (early service leavers), HR = 1.84, 95% CI: 1.49â2.27, P < 0.001.
Conclusions:
The findings provide evidence for a hidden burden of life- and limb-threatening PAD in older veterans and are consistent with the higher rates of military smoking which have been reported previously. The study emphasizes the need for vascular preventive measures in this group
Healthy workers or less healthy leavers? Mortality in military veterans
Background:
The âhealthy worker effectâ predicts that longer employment is positively associated with reduced mortality, but few studies have examined mortality in military veterans irrespective of exposure to conflict.
Aims:
To examine mortality in a large national cohort of Scottish veterans by length of service.
Methods:
Retrospective cohort study comparing survival in up to 30-year follow-up among 57 000 veterans and 173 000 people with no record of service, matched for age, sex and area of residence, who were born between 1945 and 1985. We compared antecedent diagnoses in the two groups to provide information on probable risk factors.
Results:
By the end of follow-up, 3520 (6%) veterans had died, compared with 10 947 (6%) non-veterans. Cox proportional hazard analysis confirmed no significant difference overall unadjusted or after adjusting for deprivation. On subgroup analysis, those who left prematurely (early service leavers) were at significantly increased risk of death (hazard ratio (HR) 1.16, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.09â1.24, P < 0.001), although the increase became non-significant after adjusting for socioeconomic status (HR 1.05, 95% CI 0.99â1.12). Longer-serving veterans were at significantly lower risk of death than non-veterans; the risk decreased both with length of service and in more recent birth cohorts. Smoking-related disease was the greatest contributor to increased mortality in early leavers.
Conclusion:
Among longer-serving veterans, there was evidence of a HWE partly attributable to selective attrition of early service leavers, but birth cohort analysis suggests improvements over time which may also reflect a causal effect of improved in-service health promotion
Risk factors for mental ill health in UK Army personnel: an overview
Women in the UK military are more commonly diagnosed with a mental health disorder than men, but the reasons for this difference are not fully understood. This literature review identifies the risk factors for mental ill health in military personnel before serving, during service and as a veteran. The interaction of risk factors is complex and, in some cases, may be synergistic, such as experiencing adverse events in childhood and exposure to combat. Identification of risk factors allows further research to better understand differences between men and women, and the impact of these risk factors on army personnel. In turn this will inform better preventive strategies, which could be targeted at the primary, secondary or tertiary levels
Dualities in Quantum Hall System and Noncommutative Chern-Simons Theory
We discuss different dualities of QHE in the framework of the noncommutative
Chern-Simons theory. First, we consider the Morita or T-duality transformation
on the torus which maps the abelian noncommutative CS description of QHE on the
torus into the nonabelian commutative description on the dual torus. It is
argued that the Ruijsenaars integrable many-body system provides the
description of the QHE with finite amount of electrons on the torus. The new
IIB brane picture for the QHE is suggested and applied to Jain and generalized
hierarchies. This picture naturally links 2d -model and 3d CS
description of the QHE. All duality transformations are identified in the brane
setup and can be related with the mirror symmetry and S duality. We suggest a
brane interpretation of the plateu transition in IQHE in which a critical point
is naturally described by WZW model.Comment: 31 pages, 4 figure
Identification and validation of novel biomarkers and therapeutics for pulpitis using connectivity mapping
International audienceAim To create an irreversible pulpitis gene signature from microarray data of healthy and inflamed dental pulps, followed by a bioinformatics approach using connectivity mapping to identify therapeutic compounds that could potentially treat pulpitis. Methodology The Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database, an international public repositor
All-sky search for long-duration gravitational wave transients with initial LIGO
We present the results of a search for long-duration gravitational wave transients in two sets of data collected by the LIGO Hanford and LIGO Livingston detectors between November 5, 2005 and September 30, 2007, and July 7, 2009 and October 20, 2010, with a total observational time of 283.0 days and 132.9 days, respectively. The search targets gravitational wave transients of duration 10-500 s in a frequency band of 40-1000 Hz, with minimal assumptions about the signal waveform, polarization, source direction, or time of occurrence. All candidate triggers were consistent with the expected background; as a result we set 90% confidence upper limits on the rate of long-duration gravitational wave transients for different types of gravitational wave signals. For signals from black hole accretion disk instabilities, we set upper limits on the source rate density between 3.4Ă10-5 and 9.4Ă10-4 Mpc-3 yr-1 at 90% confidence. These are the first results from an all-sky search for unmodeled long-duration transient gravitational waves. © 2016 American Physical Society
All-sky search for long-duration gravitational wave transients with initial LIGO
We present the results of a search for long-duration gravitational wave transients in two sets of data collected by the LIGO Hanford and LIGO Livingston detectors between November 5, 2005 and September 30, 2007, and July 7, 2009 and October 20, 2010, with a total observational time of 283.0 days and 132.9 days, respectively. The search targets gravitational wave transients of duration 10-500 s in a frequency band of 40-1000 Hz, with minimal assumptions about the signal waveform, polarization, source direction, or time of occurrence. All candidate triggers were consistent with the expected background; as a result we set 90% confidence upper limits on the rate of long-duration gravitational wave transients for different types of gravitational wave signals. For signals from black hole accretion disk instabilities, we set upper limits on the source rate density between 3.4Ă10-5 and 9.4Ă10-4 Mpc-3 yr-1 at 90% confidence. These are the first results from an all-sky search for unmodeled long-duration transient gravitational waves. © 2016 American Physical Society