Parental cigarette smoking and childhood risks of hepatoblastoma: OSCC data

Historically health care data and especially health care cost data were not collected by disease. This is due on one side to a lack of readily available information on the diagnosis that led to the health care given and on the other side to the diversity of actors and organizations taking charge of patients. This results in a major difficulty of linking together incompatible and separate data. A few countries have tried to desagregate their global health cost data in a top-down approach. The limits of such undertakings appeared however quickly, not the least because of the difficulties in allocating the expenditures by sector and disease. Other approaches, probably more fecund in the long run, such as the one used by the SEER-Medicare database in the U.S. favour the linkage of individual patient clinical and cost data in a bottom-up approach. However one should not ignore the potential bias problems raised by the use of even large databases such as this one. A major advantage of clinical trials for costing purposes is that they include homogeneous groups of patients randomly allocated to several treatments for comparative purposes. They are therefore potentially better adapted for comparing new treatments with standard reference care

Visualising and thinking and interpreting. Response to the Burstyn and De Roos comments on Sorahan, T. multiple myeloma and glyphosate use: a re-analysis of US Agricultural Health Study (AHS) data.

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Incidence of Myelodysplastic Syndrome in UK Petroleum Distribution and Oil Refinery Workers, 1995-2011.

The incidence of myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) experienced by cohorts of 16,467 petroleum distribution workers and 28,554 oil refinery workers has been investigated. Study subjects were all those male employees first employed at one of 476 UK petroleum distribution centres or eight UK oil refineries in the period 1946-1974; all subjects had a minimum of twelve months employment with some employment after 1st January, 1951. Observed numbers (Obs) of MDS cases were compared with expectations based on national incidence rates for the period 1995-2011. The overall standardised registration ratio (SRR) was 73 (Obs = 17) in petroleum distribution workers for the age-range 15-84 years, and 77 (Obs = 21) for the age-range 15-99 years. The overall SRR was 81 (Obs = 29) in oil refinery workers for the age-range 15-84 years, and 83 (Obs = 36) for the age-range 15-99 years. More detailed analyses were carried out in terms of year of registration, period from hire, decade of hire, and duration of employment. The overall SRR findings did not provide clear evidence for the presence of an occupational cancer hazard, and provide no support for the hypothesis that low-level benzene exposure has an important effect on the risks of MDS