Characteristics of completed suicides: implications of differences among methods.

Approximately 30% of suicides in New York City are the result of jumping from a height. After describing jumping suicides and jumping sites, we used polychotomous logistic regression to compare the characteristics of suicides by jumping to those of individuals committing suicide by hanging, ingestion, or shooting. Method used was significantly associated with sociodemographics, occupation, and mental health status, even after adjustment for individual access to the means of committing suicide. Our finding of an independent association between personal characteristics and method used provides strong evidence for the hypothesis that controlling access to an agent of suicide can influence overall suicide rates, at least in the short term. Study results support the introduction of preventive programs to control access to commonly employed agents of suicide.

Risk factors for the development and rupture of intracranial berry aneurysms.

Risk factors for the development and rupture of intracranial saccular (berry) aneurysms were identified in a case-control study of autopsy subjects. The development of berry aneurysms was positively correlated with increased frequencies of systemic arterial hypertension (p less than 0.001), cerebral artery atherosclerosis (p less than 0.05), and marked asymmetry of the cerebral vessels comprising the circle of Willis (p less than 0.005). In addition, patients with berry aneurysms more frequently had histories of persistent headache (p less than 0.001), pregnancy-induced hypertension (p less than 0.01), long-term use of analgesics (p less than 0.001), especially aspirin (p less than 0.05), and a family history of stroke (p less than 0.05). Factors associated with a decreased risk of berry aneurysms included treatment with insulin to control diabetes mellitus (p less than 0.005), leanness (p less than 0.05), chronic pancreatitis (p less than 0.001), malignant tumors (p less than 0.001), and moderate or severe coronary or renal atherosclerosis (p less than 0.05). Rupture of berry aneurysms was positively correlated with size (p less than 0.05) and the presence of multiple aneurysms (p less than 0.005), but also with long-term analgesic usage (p less than 0.05), excessive ethanol consumption (p less than 0.01), and fatty metamorphosis of the liver (p less than 0.01). The factors that predispose to rupture of berry aneurysms are interrelated in the sense that several of them are known to cause a decrease in the synthesis of prostaglandin E, whereas one of the factors that appears to be protective has the opposite effect. Marked and abrupt lowering of serum prostaglandin levels would cause dilatation of cerebral vasculature and increased cerebral blood flow; in the setting of hypertension, focal defects in cerebral arteries could develop, leading to the formation and subsequent rupture of berry aneurysms.

Cholelithiasis, cholecystectomy, and cancer: a case-control study in Sweden.

To study the relationship between gallstone disease (cholelithiasis and cholecystectomy) and cancer, a case-control study was performed in two Swedish hospitals comparing the prevalence of gallstone disease discovered at necropsy in 1422 subjects who died of cancer and 1205 subjects who did not die of cancer. Gallstone disease was more prevalent in the group of 131 women less than 50 yr of age who died of various cancers: odds ratio = 2.2, p less than 0.01. When the analysis was restricted to 89 younger women who died of cancers that have been suggested to be related to diet (breast, reproductive system, gastrointestinal), the results became more significant: odds ratio = 3.3, p less than 0.001. No such relationship was detected in older women or in men of any age. It seems likely that gallstone disease and several common cancers in younger Swedish women share similar epidemiologic and perhaps metabolic features.

Mortality after first myocardial infarction. Search for a secular trend.

Two earlier studies of prognosis of coronary heart disease among men enrolled in the Health Insurance Plan in the 1960s and 1970s permitted us to examine whether prognosis had improved over this ten-year period. The new comparison involved 1,133 men aged 35 to 64 years who had survived a first acute myocardial infarction and were followed up for mortality after a baseline examination. Mortality estimates were controlled for clinical and demographic differences between the two cohorts by multivariate methods and by comparing subgroups. The analyses showed no difference in long-term prognosis between patients in the two decades. The observations in this population suggest that any contribution of improved medical care to the nationally observed secular decline in mortality from coronary heart disease in the time period studied was probably restricted to the acute stage of myocardial infarction.

The effects of changes in smoking habits on coronary heart disease mortality.

Coronary heart disease (CHD) mortality declined by about 20 per cent between 1965 and 1976. During the same period there were substantial decreases in the proportion of adults who smoked based on data from the National Health Interview Survey (HIS). This study examines the extent to which changes in smoking can account for the decrease in CHD mortality for men and women aged 35-64 years. By applying US smoking levels (estimated from HIS) to data from four epidemiologic studies on the relative risk of CHD death by amount smoked, we obtain estimates of the portion of the decline in CHD mortality attributable to changes in smoking. Smoking changes among women were not generally consistent with declines in CHD mortality. For men, the estimated impact of smoking on CHD mortality varied considerably depending upon which study was used to estimate the relative risk by amount smoked.