Epidemiology of Gallbladder Disease: Cholelithiasis and Cancer

Diseases of the gallbladder are common and costly. The best epidemiological screening method to accurately determine point prevalence of gallstone disease is ultrasonography. Many risk factors for cholesterol gallstone formation are not modifiable such as ethnic background, increasing age, female gender and family history or genetics. Conversely, the modifiable risks for cholesterol gallstones are obesity, rapid weight loss and a sedentary lifestyle. The rising epidemic of obesity and the metabolic syndrome predicts an escalation of cholesterol gallstone frequency. Risk factors for biliary sludge include pregnancy, drugs like ceftiaxone, octreotide and thiazide diuretics, and total parenteral nutrition or fasting. Diseases like cirrhosis, chronic hemolysis and ileal Crohn's disease are risk factors for black pigment stones. Gallstone disease in childhood, once considered rare, has become increasingly recognized with similar risk factors as those in adults, particularly obesity. Gallbladder cancer is uncommon in developed countries. In the U.S., it accounts for only ~ 5,000 cases per year. Elsewhere, high incidence rates occur in North and South American Indians. Other than ethnicity and female gender, additional risk factors for gallbladder cancer include cholelithiasis, advancing age, chronic inflammatory conditions affecting the gallbladder, congenital biliary abnormalities, and diagnostic confusion over gallbladder polyps

Corruption, Investment and Growth in Developing Countries

DRMI Working Paper SeriesThe series is intended to convey the preliminary results of [DRMI] ongoing research. The research described in these papers is preliminary and has not completed the usual review process for Institute publications. We welcome feedback from readers and encourage you to convey your comments and criticisms directly to the authors

Corruption, governance, investment and growth in emerging markets

The article of record as published may be found at https://doi.org/10.1080/00036840701439363The article investigates the potential impact of corruption on economic growth by examining the effect that corruption may have on several significant determinants of economic growth, namely, investment in human, private and public capital, and on governance. Our theoretical approach allows for corruption to influence economic growth directly and indirectly through different investment and governance channels. All previous empirical work on this issue has been based on national income and product accounts (NIPA) data, which do not normally break down gross domestic investment into its private and public sector, and if they do, they misclassify investment by public enterprises as private investment, potentially biasing empirical findings. In this article we use a data set from the International Finance Corporation that bypasses these problems. We find that the impact of corruption on the level of public investment appears to be more ambiguous than it has been found in the previous literature. We, however, find that the impact of corruption on the accumulation of private capital is significantly more damaging than what has been pre- viously found. We also find that the impact of corruption on governance is unambiguously negative, which further deters economic growth