Kansanterveyslaitos, Terveyden edistämisen ja kroonisten tautien ehkäisyn osasto: Kansainvälisen arvioinnin taustamateriaali

ISBN virheellinen, sama kuin A9/2007:ll

Sydän- ja verisuonisairauksien ja diabeteksen asiantuntijaryhmän raportti 2008

Verkkoversion ISBN 978-951-740-765-

Nightmares as predictors of suicide : an extension study including war veterans

Nightmares are intensive dreams with negative emotional tone. Frequent nightmares can pose a serious clinical problem and in 2001, Tanskanen et al. found that nightmares increase the risk of suicide. However, the dataset used by these authors included war veterans in whom nightmare frequency -and possibly also suicide risk -is elevated. Therefore, re-examination of the association between nightmares and suicide in these data is warranted. We investigated the relationship between nightmares and suicide both in the general population and war veterans in Finnish National FINRISK Study from the years 1972 to 2012, a dataset overlapping with the one used in the study by Tanskanen et al. Our data comprise 71,068 participants of whom 3139 are war veterans. Participants were followed from their survey participation until the end of 2014 or death. Suicides (N = 398) were identified from the National Causes of Death Register. Frequent nightmares increase the risk of suicide: The result of Tanskanen et al. holds even when war experiences are controlled for. Actually nightmares are not significantly associated with suicides among war veterans. These results support the role of nightmares as an independent risk factor for suicide instead of just being proxy for history of traumatic experiences.Peer reviewe

Does a Slump Really Make You Thinner? Finnish Micro-level Evidence 1978-2002

This paper explores the relationship between obesity and economic conditions in Finland, using individual microdata from 1978 to 2002. The results reveal that an improvement in regional economic conditions measured by the employment-to-population ratio produces a decrease in obesity over the period of investigation, other things being equal. This effect arises from the decline in the height-adjusted weight of people who are deeply overweight, (BMI>35). In addition, the effect is strongest for the people in later middle age (aged 45-65). The incidence of obesity is unrelated to the regional growth rate. All in all, the Finnish evidence presented does not support the conclusions reported for the USA, according to which temporary economic slowdowns are good for health. In contrast, at least overweight increases during slumps.overweight, business cycles, health

Layperson-Oriented versus Clinical-Based Models for Assessing 10-Year Incidence of Coronary Heart Disease: National FINRISK Study

One laboratory-based and two non-laboratory-based models with and without blood pressure measures are developed based on data of 14815 men and 16617 women aged 25–64 years. During the followup 1134 men and 566 women developed coronary heart disease (CHD). The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (95% CI) for prediction of CHD incidence was 0.823 (0.807–0.839) for the laboratory-based model, 0.808 (0.791–0.824) and 0.803 (0.787–0.820) for the non-laboratory-based models with and without systolic blood pressure in men (P < 0.01 for overall comparison), and 0.878 (0.856–0.901), 0.871 (0.848–0.894), and 0.864 (0.840–0.887), respectively, in women (P < 0.01). The predicted rates matched well with the observed ones (P > 0.10). Compared with the model without blood pressure, the non-laboratory-based model with blood pressure tended to reclassify individuals into the higher risk categories for both event and nonevent groups in both genders. The study concludes the predictive property of the non-laboratory-based models are good