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Biomedical subjects

W Winkelstein

Publications and source records attributed to W Winkelstein.

At least 91 records · Page 5Linked to original sources

Cohort mortality for prostatic cancer among United States nonwhites.

In recent decades, age-adjusted mortality rates from prostatic cancer have risen precipitously among blacks, remaining unchanged among whites. It is now the most common cancer among United States black males. When nonwhite mortality rates were examined by age and birth cohort, it was found that peak rates occurred at every age in the cohort of 1896 to 1900, and declined thereafter. This presages an arrest and reversal of the time trend in summary mortality rates as more recent nonwhite cohorts reach the ages of maximum risk.

Age Factors↗

Prostatic cancer: mortality and incidence rates by race and social class.

Among the most striking epidemiologic characteristics of prostatic cancer in the United States is the sizeable excess in rates for the disease among blacks as compared with whites. This study attempted to determine whether the higher black rates might be explained by controlling for social class, using mortality data from Alameda County for the pericensal period 1968--1972 (n = 400), and the population-based series of cases for Alameda County included in the Third National Cancer Survey, 1969--1971 (n = 750). Reviewed first are previous studies addressed to the relationship of prostatic cancer and socioeconomic status (SES), most of which have been confined to whites. In the present study, each death or case was assigned to a socioeconomic class based on census tract of residence and rates by race and social class determined. Comparison of age-specific mortality and incidence rates by SES reveals no gradient for prostatic cancer in either whites or blacks.

Black or African American↗

Correlations of incidence rates for selected cancers in the nine areas of the Third National Cancer Survey.

Incidence date from the Third National Cancer Survey were used to study geographic variation in the occurrence of nine common cancers of nonsexual sites and five sexual sites. It was hypothesized that cancers which varied together across the nine survey communities might have common etiologic factors. The variation was measured by a series of rank and product-moment correlation coefficients in order to summarize the association between pairs of cancers in white males and in white females. The most notable findings were the high correlations between the incidence rates for the three gastrointestinal sites (stomach, colon, and rectum) and bladder cancer in both men and women and the high correlation between three female sexual sites (breast, corpus, and ovary). These two clusters are also correlated with one another. A number of other substantial correlations between pairs of cancers were observed and discussed. These associations suggest possible common etiologic agents, despite the fact that the individual secular trends for some of these cancers differ.

Breast Neoplasms↗

The association of economic status with the occurrence of lung cancer.

Lung cancer in men was shown to be inversely associated with economic class by analysis of 1959-61 mortality rates from Buffalo, New York. Using five economis strata, white men below and above age 55 in the poorest group had rates 2.6 and 3.8 times higher than those in the richest. For women, the trend was not significant. The question that was investigated was whether, for males, an economic-class trend for smoking existed which paralleled that for lung cancer. Individuals from a Buffalo sample survey were classified according to cigarette smoking habits. Age was found highly associated with both smoking and economic class. In data from white males stratified for age, no significant association was observed between smoking and econimic class. In women, the upper economic groups smoked more, particularly those above age 55. Thus, a strong inverse economic class gradient for lung cancer in men, observed by other investigators among women, cannot be explained by class-related cigarette smoking patterns alone. The possible interaction of cigarette-smoking with other potential etiologic factors that may be associated with economic class is discussed.

Adult↗

Epidemiologic studies of coronary heart disease and stroke in Japanese men living in Japan, Hawaii and California: blood pressure distributions.

Blood pressure measurements were made on three Japanese populations residing in Japan, Honolulu, and Northern California. A common protocol was utilized in an effort to standardize inter-observer variability. Zero terminal digit preference varied among the three areas and there was differential clustering of diastolic values at 80 mm Hg and 90 mm Hg in Hawaii and California, respectively. Diastolic blood pressure did not rise with age in any of the three populations while systolic blood pressure rose in each. Blood pressure levels in Japanese in Japan were intermediate to those in Hawaiian and Northern California Japanese, California having the higher blood pressure levels. Since the relative weights of the Japanese migrants to Hawaii and California were substantially higher than the relative weights of the non-migrant populations in Japan, the blood pressures were adjusted for these differences. When this was done, most of the differences among the various study subgroups were explained. The findings indicate that the blood pressure distributions of the Japanese populations residing in Japan, Hawaii, and Northern California cannot of themselves account for the observed differences in coronary heart disease and stroke occurrence among these populations in which there is a gradient from high stroke rates in Japan to low rates in California and a reverse trend for coronary heart disease.

Age Factors↗