Changes in marital quality over 6 years and its association with cardiovascular disease risk factors in men: findings from the ALSPAC prospective cohort study

Background: Marital relationship quality has been suggested to have independent effects on cardiovascular health outcomes. This study investigates the association between changes in marital relationship quality and cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors in men. Methods: We used data from The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, a prospective birth cohort study (Bristol, UK). Our baseline sample was restricted to married study fathers with baseline relationship and covariate data (n=2496). We restricted final analysis (n=620) to those with complete outcome, exposure and covariate data, who were married and confirmed the study child’s father at 6.4 years and 18.8 years after baseline. Relationship quality was measured at baseline and 6.4 years and operationalised as consistently good, improving, deteriorating or consistently poor relationship. We measured CVD risk factors of blood pressure, resting heart rate, body mass index, lipid profile and fasting glucose at 18.8 years after baseline. Results: Improving relationships were associated with lower levels of low-density lipoprotein (−0.25 mmol/L, 95% CI −0.46 to −0.03) and relative reduction of body mass index (−1.07 kg/m2, 95% CI −1.73 to −0.42) compared with consistently good relationships, adjusting for confounders. Weaker associations were found between improving relationships and total cholesterol (−0.24 mmol/L, 95% CI −0.48 to 0.00) and diastolic blood pressure (−2.24 mm Hg, 95% CI −4.59 to +0.11). Deteriorating relationships were associated with worsening diastolic blood pressure (+2.74 mm Hg, 95% CI 0.50 to 4.98). Conclusions: Improvement and deterioration of longitudinal relationship quality appears associated with respectively positive and negative associations with a range of CVD risk factors

Response to: 'On the approach for determining association between changes in marital quality and cardiovascular disease risk factors' by MM Pike

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Childhood IQ and marriage by mid-life: the Scottish Mental Survey 1932 and the Midspan Studies

The study examined the influence of IQ at age 11 years on marital status by mid-adulthood. The combined databases of the Scottish Mental Survey 1932 and the Midspan studies provided data from 883 subjects. With regard to IQ at age 11, there was an interaction between sex and marital status by mid-adulthood (p = 0.0001). Women who had ever-married achieved mean lower childhood IQ scores than women who had never-married (p < 0.001). Conversely, there was a trend for men who had ever-married to achieve higher childhood IQ scores than men who had never-married (p = 0.07). In men, the odds ratio of ever marrying was 1.35 (95% CI 0.98–1.86&#59; p = 0.07) for each standard deviation increase in childhood IQ. Among women, the odds ratio of ever marrying by mid-life was 0.42 (95% CI 0.27–0.64; p = 0.0001) for each standard deviation increase in childhood IQ. Mid-life social class had a similar association with marriage, with women in more professional jobs and men in more manual jobs being less likely to have ever-married by mid-life. Adjustment for the effects of mid-life social class and height on the association between childhood IQ and later marriage, and vice versa, attenuated the effects somewhat, but suggested that IQ, height and social class acted partly independently

Bayesian Methods in the Search for MH370

Probability theor

Bayesian Methods in the Search for MH370

Probability theor

Ribosomal DNA sequence heterogeneity reflects intraspecies phylogenies and predicts genome structure in two contrasting yeast species

The ribosomal RNA encapsulates a wealth of evolutionary information, including genetic variation that can be used to discriminate between organisms at a wide range of taxonomic levels. For example, the prokaryotic 16S rDNA sequence is very widely used both in phylogenetic studies and as a marker in metagenomic surveys and the internal transcribed spacer region, frequently used in plant phylogenetics, is now recognized as a fungal DNA barcode. However, this widespread use does not escape criticism, principally due to issues such as difficulties in classification of paralogous versus orthologous rDNA units and intragenomic variation, both of which may be significant barriers to accurate phylogenetic inference. We recently analyzed data sets from the Saccharomyces Genome Resequencing Project, characterizing rDNA sequence variation within multiple strains of the baker's yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae and its nearest wild relative Saccharomyces paradoxus in unprecedented detail. Notably, both species possess single locus rDNA systems. Here, we use these new variation datasets to assess whether a more detailed characterization of the rDNA locus can alleviate the second of these phylogenetic issues, sequence heterogeneity, while controlling for the first. We demonstrate that a strong phylogenetic signal exists within both datasets and illustrate how they can be used, with existing methodology, to estimate intraspecies phylogenies of yeast strains consistent with those derived from whole-genome approaches. We also describe the use of partial Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms, a type of sequence variation found only in repetitive genomic regions, in identifying key evolutionary features such as genome hybridization events and show their consistency with whole-genome Structure analyses. We conclude that our approach can transform rDNA sequence heterogeneity from a problem to a useful source of evolutionary information, enabling the estimation of highly accurate phylogenies of closely related organisms, and discuss how it could be extended to future studies of multilocus rDNA systems. [concerted evolution; genome hydridisation; phylogenetic analysis; ribosomal DNA; whole genome sequencing; yeast]