Comparison of different approaches for estimating age-specific alcohol-attributable mortality: The cases of France and Finland

Background

Accurate estimates of the impact of alcohol on overall and age-specific mortality are crucial for formulating health policies. However, different approaches to estimating alcohol-attributable mortality provide different results, and a detailed comparison of age-specific estimates is missing.

Methods

Using data on cause of death, alcohol consumption, and relative risks of mortality at different consumption levels, we compare eight estimates of sex- and age-specific alcohol-attributable mortality in France (2010) and Finland (2013): five estimates using cause-of-death approaches (with one accounting for contributory causes), and three estimates using attributable fraction (AF) approaches.

Results

AF-related approaches and the approach based on alcohol-related underlying and contributory causes of death provided estimates of alcohol-attributable mortality that were twice as high as the estimates found using underlying cause-of-death approaches in both countries and sexes. The differences across the methods were greatest among older age groups An inverse U-shape in age-specific alcohol-attributable mortality (peaking at around age 65) was observed for cause-of-death approaches, with this shape being more pronounced in Finland. AF-related approaches resulted in different estimates at older ages: i.e., mortality was found to increase with age in France; whereas in Finland mortality estimates depended on the underlying assumptions regarding the effects of alcohol consumption on cardiovascular mortality.

Conclusions

While the most detailed approaches (i.e., the AF-related approach and the approach that includes underlying and contributory causes) are theoretically able to provide more accurate estimates of alcohol-attributable mortality, they–especially the AF approaches- depend heavily on data availability and quality. To enhance the reliability of alcohol-attributable mortality estimates, data quality for older age groups needs to be improved.

Children's educational attainment, occupation, and income and their parents' mortality

Using data from Finland, this paper contributes to a small but growing body of research regarding adult children's education, occupation, and income and their parents' mortality at ages 50+ in 1970-2007. Higher levels of children's education are associated with 30-36 per cent lower parental mortality at ages 50-75, controlling for parents' education, occupation, and income. This association is fully mediated by children's occupation and income, except for cancer mortality. Having at least one child educated in healthcare is associated with 11-16 per cent lower all-cause mortality at ages 50-75, an association that is largely driven by mortality from cardiovascular diseases. Children's higher white-collar occupation and higher income is associated with 39-46 per cent lower mortality in the fully adjusted models. At ages 75+, these associations are much smaller overall and children's schooling remains more strongly associated with mortality than children's occupation or income.

Pre-existing depression predicts survival in cardiovascular disease and cancer

Background

Previous studies have found depression to be negatively associated with the prognosis of both cardiovascular disease (CVD) and cancer, but this may partly reflect reverse causality. We limited the possibility of reverse causality by measuring depression before the first diagnosis of CVD or cancer.

Methods

We used an 11% longitudinal random sample of the Finnish population aged 25 years or older who are residents of Finland for at least 1 year between 1987 and 2007, with an 80% oversample of those who died during this period. Those who had their first incidence of coronary heart disease (CHD) (n=107 966), stroke (n=68 685) or cancer (n=113 754) between 1998 and 2012 were followed up for cause-specific mortality from the date of diagnosis until the end of 2012. Depression was defined as having antidepressant purchases two to three calendar years before the incidence. Logistic and Cox regression models were used to examine short-term and long-term mortality by depression status.

Results

Long-term mortality after diagnosis was 1.34 (95% CI 1.25 to 1.44) for CHD, 1.26 (95% CI 1.15 to 1.37) for stroke and 1.10 (95% CI 1.04 to 1.16) for cancer in those who had used antidepressants in two consecutive calendar years as compared with those with no purchases. Short-term mortality from CHD was elevated among persons with depression (OR=1.30; 95% CI 1.06 to 1.61), but no association was found for stroke.

Conclusion

Pre-existing depression is associated with a worse prognosis of CHD, stroke and cancer. More attention in the healthcare system is needed for patients with chronic diseases who have a history of depression.

MINDMAP: establishing an integrated database infrastructure for research in ageing, mental well-being, and the urban environment

Background

Urbanization and ageing have important implications for public mental health and well-being. Cities pose major challenges for older citizens, but also offer opportunities to develop, test, and implement policies, services, infrastructure, and interventions that promote mental well-being. The MINDMAP project aims to identify the opportunities and challenges posed by urban environmental characteristics for the promotion and management of mental well-being and cognitive function of older individuals.

Methods

MINDMAP aims to achieve its research objectives by bringing together longitudinal studies from 11 countries covering over 35 cities linked to databases of area-level environmental exposures and social and urban policy indicators. The infrastructure supporting integration of this data will allow multiple MINDMAP investigators to safely and remotely co-analyse individual-level and area-level data.

Individual-level data is derived from baseline and follow-up measurements of ten participating cohort studies and provides information on mental well-being outcomes, sociodemographic variables, health behaviour characteristics, social factors, measures of frailty, physical function indicators, and chronic conditions, as well as blood derived clinical biochemistry-based biomarkers and genetic biomarkers. Area-level information on physical environment characteristics (e.g. green spaces, transportation), socioeconomic and sociodemographic characteristics (e.g. neighbourhood income, residential segregation, residential density), and social environment characteristics (e.g. social cohesion, criminality) and national and urban social policies is derived from publically available sources such as geoportals and administrative databases.

The linkage, harmonization, and analysis of data from different sources are being carried out using piloted tools to optimize the validity of the research results and transparency of the methodology.

Discussion

MINDMAP is a novel research collaboration that is combining population-based cohort data with publicly available datasets not typically used for ageing and mental well-being research. Integration of various data sources and observational units into a single platform will help to explain the differences in ageing-related mental and cognitive disorders both within as well as between cities in Europe, the US, Canada, and Russia and to assess the causal pathways and interactions between the urban environment and the individual determinants of mental well-being and cognitive ageing in older adults.

Electronic supplementary material

The online version of this article (10.1186/s12889-018-5031-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Changes in Socioeconomic Differences in Hospital Days With Age: Cumulative Disadvantage, Age-as-Leveler, or Both?

OBJECTIVES

Length of hospital stay is inversely associated with socioeconomic status (SES). It is less clear whether socioeconomic disparities in numbers of hospital days diverge or converge with age.

METHOD

Longitudinal linked Finnish registry data (1988-2007) from 137,653 men and women aged 50-79 years at the end of 1987 were used. Trajectories of annual total hospital days by education, household income, and occupational class were estimated using negative binomial models.

RESULTS

Men and women with higher education, household income, and occupational class had fewer hospital days in 1988 than those with lower SES. Hospital days increased between 1988 and 2007. For some age groups, higher SES was associated with a faster annual rate of increase, resulting in narrowing rate ratios of hospital days between SES groups (relative differences); the rate ratios remained stable for other groups. Absolute SES differences in numbers of hospital days appeared to diverge with age among those aged 50-69 years at baseline, but converge among those aged 70-79 years at baseline.

DISCUSSION

The hypotheses that socioeconomic disparities in health diverge or converge with age may not be mutually exclusive; we demonstrated convergence/maintenance in relative differences for all age groups, but divergence or convergence in absolute differences depending on age.

Advanced Maternal Age and the Risk of Low Birth Weight and Preterm Delivery: a Within-Family Analysis Using Finnish Population Registers

Advanced maternal age at birth is considered a major risk factor for birth outcomes. It is unclear to what extent this association is confounded by maternal characteristics. To test whether advanced maternal age at birth independently increases the risk of low birth weight (<2,500 g) and preterm birth (<37 weeks' gestation), we compared between-family models (children born to different mothers at different ages) with within-family models (children born to the same mother at different ages). The latter procedure reduces confounding by unobserved parental characteristics that are shared by siblings. We used Finnish population registers, including 124,098 children born during 1987-2000. When compared with maternal ages 25-29 years in between-family models, maternal ages of 35-39 years and ≥40 years were associated with percentage increases of 1.1 points (95% confidence intervals: 0.8, 1.4) and 2.2 points (95% confidence intervals: 1.4, 2.9), respectively, in the probability of low birth weight. The associations are similar for the risk of preterm delivery. In within-family models, the relationship between advanced maternal age and low birth weight or preterm birth is statistically and substantively negligible. In Finland, advanced maternal age is not independently associated with the risk of low birth weight or preterm delivery among mothers who have had at least 2 live births.

Social determinants of drug-related mortality in a general population

BACKGROUND

We investigated the association between social determinants and a broad selection of drug-related deaths in a general population.

METHODS

We conducted a follow-up of an 11% random sample of working-age Finnish residents for 1996-2007 linked with an oversampling of deaths and population registration data on social characteristics. We defined total drug-related deaths as those from psychoactive substance use disorders and drug-induced poisonings (drug-induced deaths) as well as drug-related accidents, homicides, illnesses, and suicides.

RESULTS

The number of drug-related deaths was three times that of drug-induced deaths. We found the highest hazard ratios (HRs) for total drug-related mortality for long-term unemployment (4.9; 95% confidence interval [CI], 4.3-5.6), short-term unemployment (3.9; 95% CI, 3.5-4.4), and retirement (5.8; 95% CI, 5.1-6.8). The HRs were highest for mortality related to psychoactive substance use disorders and lowest for mortality related to drug-related suicides. The differences were large for both sexes.

CONCLUSIONS

Drug-related mortality was associated with social disadvantage; however, the strength of the association varied by drug-related cause of death. Primary and secondary prevention of drug use should particularly target disadvantaged groups.

The Spillover Influence of Partner's Education on Myocardial Infarction Incidence and Survival

BACKGROUND

Education is believed to have positive spillover effects across network connections. Partner's education may be an important resource preventing the incidence of disease and helping patients cope with illness. We examined how partner's education predicted myocardial infarction (MI) incidence and survival net of own education and other socioeconomic resources in Finland.

METHODS

A sample of adults aged 40-69 years at baseline in Finland in 1990 was followed up for MI incidence and mortality during the period 1991-2007 (n = 354,100).

RESULTS

Lower own and spousal education both contributed independently to a higher risk of MI incidence and fatality when mutually adjusted. Having a partner with basic education was particularly strongly associated with long-term fatality in women with a hazard ratio of 1.53 (95% confidence interval, 1.22-1.92) compared with women with tertiary level educated partners. There was some evidence that the incidence risk associated with basic spousal education was weaker in those with own basic education. The highest risks of MI incidence and fatality were consistently found in those without a partner, whereas the most favorable outcomes were in households where both partners had a tertiary level of education.

CONCLUSIONS

Accounting for spousal education demonstrates how health-enhancing resources accumulate to some households. Marriage between people of similar educational levels may therefore contribute to the widening of educational differences in MI incidence and survival.

Influence of affordability of alcohol on educational disparities in alcohol-related mortality in Finland and Sweden: a time series analysis

BACKGROUND

Prices of alcohol and income tend to influence how much people buy and consume alcohol. Price and income may be combined into one measure, affordability of alcohol. Research on the association between affordability of alcohol and alcohol-related harm is scarce. Furthermore, no research exists on how this association varies across different subpopulations. We estimated the effects of affordability of alcohol on alcohol-related mortality according to gender and education in Finland and Sweden.

METHODS

Vector-autoregressive time series modelling was applied to the quarter-annual aggregations of alcohol-related deaths and affordability of alcohol in Finland in 1988-2007 and in Sweden in 1991-2008. Alcohol-related mortality was defined using information on both underlying and contributory causes of death. We calculated affordability of alcohol index using information on personal taxable income and prices of various types of alcohol.

RESULTS

Among Finnish men with secondary education, an increase of 1% in the affordability of total alcohol was associated with an increase of 0.028% (95% CI 0.004 to 0.053) in alcohol-related mortality. Similar associations were also found for affordability for various types of alcohol and for beer only in the lowest education group. We found few other significant positive associations for other subpopulations in Finland or Sweden. However, reverse associations were found among secondary-educated Swedish women.

CONCLUSIONS

Overall, the associations between affordability of alcohol and alcohol-related mortality were relatively weak. Increased affordability of total alcoholic beverages was associated with higher rates of alcohol-related mortality only among Finnish men with secondary education.

'Fundamental causes' of inequalities in mortality: an empirical test of the theory in 20 European populations

The 'fundamental causes' theory stipulates that when new opportunities for lowering mortality arise, higher socioeconomic groups will benefit more because of their greater material and non-material resources. We tested this theory using harmonised mortality data by educational level for 22 causes of death and 20 European populations from the period 1980-2010. Across all causes and populations, mortality on average declined by 2.49 per cent (95%CI: 2.04-2.92), 1.83% (1.37-2.30) and 1.34% (0.89-1.78) per annum among the high, mid and low educated, respectively. In 69 per cent of cases of declining mortality, mortality declined faster among the high than among the low educated. However, when mortality increased, less increase among the high educated was found in only 46 per cent of cases. Faster mortality decline among the high educated was more manifest for causes of death amenable to intervention than for non-amenable causes. The difference in mortality decline between education groups was not larger when income inequalities were greater. While our results provide support for the fundamental causes theory, our results suggest that other mechanisms than the theory implies also play a role.

Educational expansion and inequalities in mortality-A fixed-effects analysis using longitudinal data from 18 European populations

Objective

The aim of this paper is to empirically evaluate whether widening educational inequalities in mortality are related to the substantive shifts that have occurred in the educational distribution.

Materials and methods

Data on education and mortality from 18 European populations across several decades were collected and harmonized as part of the Demetriq project. Using a fixed-effects approach to account for time trends and national variation in mortality, we formally test whether the magnitude of relative inequalities in mortality by education is associated with the gender and age-group specific proportion of high and low educated respectively.

Results

The results suggest that in populations with larger proportions of high educated and smaller proportions of low educated, the excess mortality among intermediate and low educated is larger, all other things being equal.

Conclusion

We conclude that the widening educational inequalities in mortality being observed in recent decades may in part be attributed to educational expansion.

The contribution of alcohol consumption and smoking to educational inequalities in life expectancy among Swedish men and women during 1991-2008

Objectives

To assess the level and changes in contribution of smoking and alcohol-related mortality to educational differences in life expectancy in Sweden.

Methods

We used register data on the Swedish population at ages 30–74 during 1991–2008. Cause of death was used to identify alcohol-related deaths, while smoking-related mortality was estimated using lung cancer mortality to indirectly assess the impact of smoking on all-cause mortality.

Results

Alcohol consumption and smoking contributed to educational differences in life expectancy. Alcohol-related mortality was higher among men and contributed substantially to inequalities among men and made a small (but increasing) contribution to inequalities among women. Smoking-related mortality decreased among men but increased among women, primarily among the low educated. At the end of the follow-up, smoking-related mortality were at similar levels among men and women. The widening gap in life expectancy among women could largely be attributed to smoking.

Conclusions

Smoking and alcohol consumption contribute to educational differences in life expectancy among men and women. The majority of the widening in the educational gap in mortality among women can be attributed to alcohol and smoking-related mortality.

Determinants of the magnitude of socioeconomic inequalities in mortality: A study of 17 European countries

The magnitude of socioeconomic inequalities in mortality differs importantly between countries, but these variations have not been satisfactorily explained. We explored the role of behavioral and structural determinants of these variations, by using a dataset covering 17 European countries in the period 1970-2010, and by conducting multilevel multivariate regression analyses. Our results suggest that between-country variations in inequalities in current mortality can partly be understood from variations in inequalities in smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, and poverty. Also, countries with higher national income, higher quality of government, higher social transfers, higher health care expenditure and more self-expression values have smaller inequalities in mortality. Finally, trends in behavioral risk factors, particularly smoking and excessive alcohol consumption, appear to partly explain variations in inequalities in mortality trends. This study shows that analyses of variations in health inequalities between countries can help to identify entry-points for policy.

Adaptive and non-adaptive models of depression: A comparison using register data on antidepressant medication during divorce

Divorce is associated with an increased probability of a depressive episode, but the causation of events remains unclear. Adaptive models of depression propose that depression is a social strategy in part, whereas non-adaptive models tend to propose a diathesis-stress mechanism. We compare an adaptive evolutionary model of depression to three alternative non-adaptive models with respect to their ability to explain the temporal pattern of depression around the time of divorce. Register-based data (304,112 individuals drawn from a random sample of 11% of Finnish people) on antidepressant purchases is used as a proxy for depression. This proxy affords an unprecedented temporal resolution (a 3-monthly prevalence estimates over 10 years) without any bias from non-compliance, and it can be linked with underlying episodes via a statistical model. The evolutionary-adaptation model (all time periods with risk of divorce are depressogenic) was the best quantitative description of the data. The non-adaptive stress-relief model (period before divorce is depressogenic and period afterwards is not) provided the second best quantitative description of the data. The peak-stress model (periods before and after divorce can be depressogenic) fit the data less well, and the stress-induction model (period following divorce is depressogenic and the preceding period is not) did not fit the data at all. The evolutionary model was the most detailed mechanistic description of the divorce-depression link among the models, and the best fit in terms of predicted curvature; thus, it offers most rigorous hypotheses for further study. The stress-relief model also fit very well and was the best model in a sensitivity analysis, encouraging development of more mechanistic models for that hypothesis.

Poor Adherence to Statin and Antihypertensive Therapies as Risk Factors for Fatal Stroke

BACKGROUND

Poor adherence to medication regimens is common, potentially contributing to the occurrence of related disease.

OBJECTIVES

The authors sought to assess the risk of fatal stroke associated with nonadherence to statin and/or antihypertensive therapy.

METHODS

We conducted a population-based study using electronic medical and prescription records from Finnish national registers in 1995 to 2007. Of the 58,266 hypercholesterolemia patients age 30+ years without pre-existing stroke or cardiovascular disease, 532 patients died of stroke (cases), and 57,734 remained free of incident stroke (controls) during the mean follow-up of 5.5 years. We captured year-by-year adherence to statin and antihypertensive therapy in both study groups and estimated the excess risk of stroke death associated with nonadherence.

RESULTS

In all hypercholesterolemia patients, the adjusted odds ratio for stroke death for nonadherent compared with adherent statin users was 1.35 (95% confidence interval [CI] 1.04 to 1.74) 4 years before and 2.04 (95% CI: 1.72 to 2.43) at the year of stroke death or the end of the follow-up. In hypercholesterolemia patients with hypertension, relative to those who adhered to statins and antihypertensive therapy, the odds ratio at the year of stroke death was 7.43 (95% CI: 5.22 to 10.59) for those nonadherent both to statin and antihypertensive therapy, 1.82 (95% CI: 1.43 to 2.33) for those non-adherent to statin but adherent to antihypertensive therapy, and 1.30 (95% CI: 0.53 to 3.20) for those adherent to statin, but nonadherent to antihypertensive, therapy.

CONCLUSIONS

Individuals with hypercholesterolemia and hypertension who fail to take their prescribed statin and antihypertensive medication experience a substantially increased risk of fatal stroke. The risk is lower if the patient is adherent to either one of these therapies.

Trajectories of Antidepressant Medication before and after the Onset of Unemployment by Subsequent Employment Experience

BACKGROUND

The unemployed more often suffer from depression than the employed. We examined whether mental health deterioration occurs already before unemployment implicating health selection, or whether it mostly occurs after becoming exposed to the experience rendering causal explanations more likely.

METHODS

We used nationally representative Finnish register data to examine changes in depressive morbidity as measured by antidepressant medication in 1995-2009 over four years before and since a new onset of unemployment (N = 28 000) at the age of 30-60 compared to the employed (N = 124 136). We examined separately those who became continuously long-term unemployed, intermittently unemployed and unemployed with eventual re-employment in the second, third or fourth year since the year of onset. Annual repeated measurements were analysed using generalised estimation equations.

RESULTS

Among the employed antidepressant medication increased slowly but steadily over the study period and it was mainly at a lower level than among the unemployed. In the four years leading to unemployment there was excess increase in medication that was generally stronger among those with longer duration of the eventual unemployment experience. During unemployment medication decreased in all groups except among the intermittently unemployed. By the first year of re-employment antidepressant medication reached a level similar to that among the employed and afterwards followed no consistent trend.

CONCLUSIONS

The associations of unemployment and re-employment with depressive morbidity appear to be largely driven by health selection. The question of potential causal associations remains unresolved for intermittent unemployment in particular.