Association Between Cardiovascular Disease Risk Factors and Mortality in Adults With Diabetes: A Stratified Analysis by Sex, Race, and Ethnicity.

Objectives: To assess sex and racial/ethnic differences in the relationship between multiple cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors and mortality among a nationally representative sample of adults with diabetes. Methods: Data were analyzed from 3,503 adults with diabetes from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2001-2010 and its linked mortality data through 31 December 2011. The outcome was mortality; the independent variables were sex and race/ethnicity. Covariates included demographics, comorbidity, and lifestyle variables. Cox proportional hazards regression was used to test associations between mortality and CVD risk factors. Results: In adjusted analyses, the association between diastolic blood pressure and mortality was significantly different by sex and race/ethnicity (unadjusted p = 0.009; adjusted p = 0.042). Kaplan-Meier survival curves showed Hispanic women had the highest survival compared to Hispanic men and Non-Hispanic Black (NHB) and Non-Hispanic White (NHW) men and women; NHW men had the lowest survival probability. Conclusion: In this nationally representative sample, stratified analyses showed women had higher survival rates compared to men within each race/ethnicity group, and Hispanic women had the highest survival compared to all other groups.

Separating the determinants of phylogenetic community structure.

The role of competition in forbidding similar species from co-occurring has long been debated. A difficulty in identifying this repulsion of similar species is that similar species share similar environmental requirements and hence show an attraction to communities where these requirements are met. To disentangle these opposing patterns, we use phylogenetic relatedness as an objective metric of species similarities. Studying 11 sunfishes (Centrarchidae) from 890 lakes, we first show no phylogenetic pattern in the raw community data. We then regressed sunfish presence/absence against seven environmental variables and show that lakes with similar water clarity and latitude likely contain closely related species. After statistically removing the environmental effects, phylogenetic repulsion was apparent, with closely related sunfishes less likely to co-occur. Thus, both phylogenetic attraction, driven by environmental filtering, and phylogenetic repulsion, possibly caused by competition, simultaneously occur and obscure one another in the overall phylogenetic structure of sunfish communities.