Search PubMed⌕ Search

Biomedical subjects

G G Rhoads

Publications and source records attributed to G G Rhoads.

At least 91 records · Page 5Linked to original sources
PubMed1984

Maternal alcohol consumption and birth weight. How much drinking during pregnancy is safe?

The relationship between maternal alcohol drinking during pregnancy and birth weight was examined using prospectively collected data from 31,604 pregnancies. The percentage of newborns below the tenth percentile of weight for gestational age increased sharply with increasing alcohol intake. After adjustment for other risks, a reduction in mean birth weight was seen in drinkers compared with nondrinkers, ranging from 14 g in those drinking less than one drink each day to 165 g in those drinking three to five drinks each day. The adjusted odds ratio for producing a small-for-dates newborn compared with nondrinkers ranged from 1.11 in those drinking less than one drink daily to 1.96 in those drinking three to five drinks daily. Consuming at least one to two drinks daily was associated with a substantially increased risk of producing a growth-retarded infant. Conversely, consuming less than one drink daily had a minimal effect on intrauterine growth and birth weight.

Alcohol Drinking↗
PubMed1984

Occurrence and prevention of rheumatic fever among ethnic groups of Hawaii.

To assess the occurrence of acute rheumatic fever (RF) among the ethnic groups of Hawaii, the case records of hospitalized children with RF in Oahu were reviewed for the period from October 1976 to September 1980. One hundred four of the records met the modified Jones criteria. Incidence rates per 100,000 children were as follows: Japanese, 0; white, 9; Filipino, 9.1; Hawaiian and part-Hawaiian, 27.2; and Samoan, 96.5. Carditis was most common among Samoan children; it occurred in nine of 18 children. A streptococcal, throat culture program for children with respiratory infections was in progress in 60% of Oahu's public schools during this period of time. Children with positive cultures were excluded from school until the start of treatment. However, RF occurred with equal frequency in participating and nonparticipating schools. Rheumatic fever continues to be a substantial problem among Polynesian children in Hawaii, and it is apparent that the school-based primary prevention program used in Hawaii to control streptococcal disease has not altered the frequency of RF among them.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1984

Late mortality after partial gastrectomy.

A 10-year prospective study of Hawaii Japanese males with partial gastrectomy shows that the age-adjusted mortality rates in men with partial gastrectomy were slightly higher than in those with an intact stomach, but the difference failed to achieve statistical significance. This excess of mortality is due, in part, to excess smoking by men who had ulcers of the stomach. Although death due to stroke and lung cancer showed the most substantial deviations from the base population, this can be attributed only in part to the tendency of men with these diseases to be smokers. Other factors, possibly related to nutrition, also contribute to the increased risk of mortality from these diseases. Death from coronary heart disease, an illness with a substantial association with smoking in men with an intact stomach was less frequent in men with gastrectomy but the difference was not statistically significant. It would appear that men with partial gastrectomy had other characteristics that weakened the impact of smoking upon coronary disease risk--low blood pressure, low serum cholesterol, low body weight and increased alcohol consumption.

Aged↗
PubMed1983

The relation of coronary disease, stroke, and mortality to weight in youth and in middle age.

During ten years of follow-up 701 deaths occurred among 8006 45-68-year-old Honolulu Japanese men who were originally examined in 1965-68. Mortality was highest in both the leanest and fattest men and lowest in the fourth quintile of body mass index (BMI). The excess deaths in the top quintile were due primarily to coronary heart disease which was directly and positively related to BMI. In the bottom two quintiles excess mortality was due to cancer and "other" causes and was confined to men who had lost weight between age 25 and examination. This finding suggests that excess mortality in thin middle-aged men is due to occult antecedent disease rather than leanness per se. When BMI at age 25 was considered, men in the bottom quintile had the lowest mortality in middle age. It is concluded that upward revision of tables of desirable weight for young men would be unwarranted. A modest increase in the upper limit in middle-aged men may be justifiable, but the evidence is incomplete.

Adult↗
PubMed1983

Cultural and biological inheritance of plasma lipids.

A path analytic model for the analysis of nuclear family data is described and used to analyze the results of two major studies of cholesterol (CH) and triglyceride (TG), the Honolulu Heart Study (HHS) of Japanese-Americans and the Cincinnati Lipid Research Clinic (LRC) study of Caucasians. The studies were first analyzed separately to assess evidence for genetic and cultural transmission, marital resemblance, and maternal environmental effects for the two plasma lipids, and then simultaneously to identify the nature and sources of any between-study-heterogeneity. There were significant sources of heterogeneity between the two studies for CH (only marital environmental resemblance and non-transmitted sibling environmental resemblance) and for TG (only non-transmitted sibling environmental resemblance). The two studies were homogeneous with respect to the magnitude of genetic and cultural effects; for CH genetic heritability was estimated as h2 = .594 +/- .041 while cultural heritability was estimated as c2 = .035 +/- .008, and for TG the two heritabilities were estimated as h2 = .259 +/- .034 and c2 = .108 +/- .014. An additional bivariate analysis of the association between the two lipids revealed that all phenotypic resemblance could be explained in terms of an association of non-transmitted residual environments with little evidence for a genetic association. The relevance of these results for an understanding of the genetic epidemiology of plasma lipids is discussed.

Asian People↗
PubMed1983

Family resemblance for fasting blood glucose in a population of Japanese Americans.

The pattern of inheritance of fasting blood glucose was examined in a Japanese cohort of 500 nuclear families living in Hawaii. A principal component of glucose was defined to improve the ranking of diabetics and individuals receiving treatment (medication and/or diet) for hyperglycemia, thereby allowing as well as possible for inability to determine untreated levels in patients. Results from path and segregation analysis show that family resemblance for glucose is low in this population. The additive variation can be explained by a cultural model of inheritance without introducing intergenerational differences, a maternal-paternal effect, or even genetic parameters. Heritability is approximately 0.125. Complex segregation analysis provides no convincing evidence for a major gene, with preliminary support based upon leptokurtic outliers in five families disappearing on further analysis by partial truncation. A claim by other workers of a major recessive gene for hyperglycemia may be due to their failure to allow for treatment, skewness, and multifactorial heritability. In future, the search for major loci acting on liability to hyperglycemia should use multiple determinations of fasting glucose or be addressed to more primary and repeatable variables than fasting blood glucose.

Adult↗
PubMed1983

Characteristics of joggers among Japanese men in Hawaii.

In a population-based cohort of Japanese American men in Hawaii, the 450 joggers differed from 6,171 nonjoggers in being younger, taller, heavier, and more obese; in having larger vital capacity, higher socioeconomic status, and a higher prevalence of certain electrocardiographic abnormalities; and in being more health conscious as demonstrated by less smoking and a higher frequency of special diets. Blood pressure, serum total cholesterol, hematocrit and high density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) did not differ significantly between the two groups. Multiple regression analysis showed HDL-C to be inversely related to obesity and cigarettes, and directly related to alcohol consumption but to have no relationship to jogging or age. Temporal analyses suggested that initiation of jogging was followed by a reduction in heart rate, but there was no significant change in other measured parameters. Coronary heart disease (CHD) prevalence was increased in joggers, perhaps because the diagnosis of CHD predisposes to this activity. We conclude that jogging has probably had little impact on the health of this cohort.

Aged↗
PubMed1982

Glucose intolerance and nine-year mortality in Japanese men in Hawaii.

The relationship between glucose intolerance and nine-year mortality was examined in a cohort of approximately 8,000 men of Japanese ancestry living in Hawaii who were 45 to 68 years of age at baseline examination. Age-adjusted mortality for death from all causes, cardiovascular disease, coronary heart disease and causes other than cardiovascular disease and cancer were significantly higher in men with glucose intolerance, defined by either medication for diabetes or 1-hour post-load serum glucose levels above the 90th percentile cut-point (225 mg/dl) at baseline examination, than in normoglycemic men. Although many cardiovascular risk factors were found to be associated with glucose intolerance, both post-load serum glucose level and medication for diabetes remained significant as risk factors for overall, cardiovascular and coronary death in multivariate logistic analysis in which confounding effects of age, blood pressure, serum cholesterol, body mass index and other important risk factors were taken into account.

Age Factors↗
PubMed1982

The plasma lipoproteins as risk factors: comparison of electrophoretic and ultracentrifugation results.

Epidemiologic data from 1,859 men aged 45-65 were examined to explore which approach to analyzing plasma lipids and lipoproteins would be most useful for clinical medicine. In addition to analyzing fasting plasma lipids (cholesterol and triglyceride), we used two chemical techniques to measure the three major classes of lipoproteins: ultracentrifugation with heparin/manganese precipitation which yielded values for HDL-, LDL- and VLDL-cholesterol, and quantitative electrophoresis which yielded values for alpha-, beta- and pre-beta-lipoprotein. Both measures of the cholesterol-rich lipoprotein class (LDL-cholesterol and beta-lipoprotein) were related to CHD prevalence, but neither appeared to be superior to total serum cholesterol in the strength--approximately twofold--of the association. Both measures of the protein-rich lipoprotein class (HDL-cholesterol and alpha-lipoprotein) showed a two-fold inverse association with CHD, although the latter did not attain statistical significance. No member of the triglyceride-rich class (pre-beta-lipoprotein, VLDL-cholesterol, or serum triglyceride itself) was independently associated with CHD. We conclude that plasma total cholesterol remains a good single test for most clinical situations because of the prognostic information it contains, its widespread availability and its role in treatment decisions; also that either the plasma alpha-lipoprotein or HDL-cholesterol level can provide additional information on the likelihood of disease.

Aged↗
PubMed1981

Comparison of methods for diagnosing angina pectoris: the Honolulu heart study.

Data from the Honolulu Heart Study suggest that the examining physician's clinical diagnosis, based on questioning the subject about chest pain, was more sensitive than the Rose questionnaire in detecting angina pectoris in a population of Japanese men. The 2 methods appear equally specific for coronary heart disease.

Aged↗
PubMed1981

Serum cholesterol and mortality in a Japanese-American population: the Honolulu Heart program.

The authors have examined the relation of baseline serum cholesterol level to subsequent 9-year mortality in a cohort of Japanese-American men. The baseline serum cholesterol level was positively related to coronary heart disease mortality. It was inversely related to total cancer mortality and to mortality from cancers of the esophagus, colon, liver and lung and to malignancies of the lymphatic and hematopoietic system. When mortality in the first two years after examination was removed from consideration in an attempt to allow for existing clinical or subclinical disease, the inverse relation to cancer persisted but was statistically significant only for colon cancer and lung cancer among the common sites as well as for malignancies of the lymphatic and hematopoietic system. When known prevalence cases of cancer were eliminated from the computation, the inverse relation between cholesterol level and cancer mortality persisted significantly only for colon among the common cancer sites. The relation of baseline serum cholesterol level to total mortality in this cohort was quadratic; that is, there was an excess of deaths associated with serum cholesterol level at the high end of the distribution (mainly due to coronary heart disease) and at the low end (mainly due to cancer).

Aged↗
PubMed1981

Alcohol and cardiovascular disease: the Hawaiian experience.

Data from the Honolulu Heart Program indicate that there is an inverse relation between alcohol intake (up to 60 oz of ethanol/month) and the risk of coronary heart disease incidence and mortality. Alcohol intake is positively related to levels of systolic and diastolic blood pressure and to hypertension as defined by the criteria of the World Health Organization. Alcohol intake is not related to the incidence of cerebral infarction, but is positively related to the incidence of hemorrhage. Alcohol intake is also related to mortality from cirrhosis of the liver and from various types of cancer.

Aged↗
PubMed1980

Determinants of blood pressure in Japanese-American Families.

Blood pressure gave evidence for genetic heritability (0.24 for systolic 0.19 for diastolic) and for cultural heritability (0.16 for systolic, 0.09 for diastolic in children) in a sample of Japanese-American families. A small but significant fraction of cultural inheritance was due to maternal effects, possibly mediated through dietary habits. There was no convincing evidence for major loci causing hypertension in this population, and the polymorphism proposed by Platt was excluded as a principal cause of hypertension.

Adult↗
PubMed1980

Alcohol and mortality: the Honolulu Heart Study.

It has been shown previously that coronary heart disease was less likely to develop in Japanese men in Honolulu who drank alcoholic beverages than in those who abstained, and that the more they drank (up to about 60 ml/day of ethanol) the lower the risk. In this report on the same men, it is shown that the same sort of relation holds for mortality from coronary heart disease but that the reverse is true for death from cancer and from stroke. Men who drank were more likely to die from these causes than those who abstained, and the more they drank the greater the risk of death. Men who drank relatively large amounts were more likely to die from cirrhosis of the liver than other men. The resultant curve for total mortality is u-shaped, the lowest risk being for men who consumed from 1 to 10 ml/day of ethanol. Even at that low level of consumption, however, the risk of death from cancer or stroke was greater than it was for nondrinkers. In short, for this population of Japanese men, alcohol consumption appears to have some benefits and some hazards with regard to mortality, and the benefit or hazard depends on which cause of death is being considered.

Aged↗