Morbidity in Canadian Indian and non-Indian children in the first year of life.

A cohort study of health status was undertaken to determine the patterns of morbidity in the first year of life for Indian and non-Indian infants living in southern Ontario. The annual incidence of office-reported health problems was 8.0 episodes for the 99 Indians and 4.5 for the 316 non-Indians studied. The risk of illness of most diagnostic categories was more than 1.5 times greater and the rate of hospital admission 4 times greater for the Indian infants. There was no difference between the two cohorts in the rates of visits to hospital emergency departments. The main cause of illness in both cohorts was respiratory tract infection; lower respiratory tract infections, particularly pneumonia, were a major health problem among the Indian infants. Only 36% of the Indian infants compared with 68% of the non-Indian infants attended five or more well-baby examinations. Part of the difference in morbidity between the Indian and non-Indian infants may be attributed to environmental factors, health care behaviour and geographic constraints.

Measles antibodies as related to HL-A types in multiple sclerosis.

One hundred thirty-six patients with multiple sclerosis and several control groups were studied for measles antibodies using several different antigens. Measles antibodies were higher in the multiple sclerosis population, but siblings also had higher titers than matched and random controls. The elevation in antibody titers (complement fixation) was found in female multiple sclerosis patients and male patients with HL-A types 3, 7, and W-18. Male patients not carrying these HL-A antigens had, as a group, relatively normal antibody levels. These data confirm a familial factor in elevated measles antibody titers. We suggest that HL-A antigens are linked to one of the factors that determines measles antibody titers in multiple sclerosis patients.

A method for the epidemiologic study of early diabetes.

A diabetic survey was conducted among 4048 subjects well enough to report for work, using a questionnaire covering past, present, family and obstetric history, and a capillary blood glucose determination at least 1(1/2) hours after eating. A "positive screen" was obtained in 267 individuals, in 67 on the basis of elevated blood glucose value alone, in 179 on the basis of questionnaire responses alone, and in 21 by both criteria. Glucose tolerance tests were performed on 130 subjects (49% of eligible individuals) and yielded diabetic curves in 18, 6 and 33% respectively for the three categories of positive screening tests.It is suggested that the magnitude of the group with positive history only is such that future natural history studies must take this subsample into consideration.

HL-A frequencies in patients with multiple sclerosis.

The histocompatibility antigens (HL-A) have been determined in 100 multiple sclerosis (M.S.) patients and 140 randomly selected controls. In the M.S. group there was a statistically significant increase in the frequency of HL-A 7 and W 18 with an insignificant increase in HL-A 3. The variance from normal HL-A patterns in the M.S. population may play some role in establishing the substrate for this disease. Studies in experimental animals have shown that susceptibility to autoimmune disease and to virus infection is linked to the major histocompatibility locus. This has interesting implications for both the "slow virus" and the "autoimmune" theories of the etiology of multiple sclerosis.