BACKGROUND More than one third of adult population in Estonia has problems with elevated blood pressure (BP). The Hypertension in Estonia (HYPEST) study represents the country's first hypertension-targeted sample collection aiming to examine the epidemiological and genetic determinants for hypertension (HTN) and related cardiovascular diseases (CVD) in Estonian population. The HYPEST subjects (...

Jõgi, R. 2001. Asthma: Respiratory Symptoms, Atopy and Bronchial Hyperresponsiveness in Young Adults in Estonia and Sweden. Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. Comprehensive Summaries of Uppsala Dissertations from the Faculty of Medicine 1076. 64 pp. Uppsala. ISBN 91-554-5119-5. Morbidity of asthma has increased over the world. The reasons for this increase have remained unclear. Studies in childre...

Although sheep (Ovis aries) have been one of the most exploited domestic animals in Estonia since the Late Bronze Age, relatively little is known about their genetic history. Here, we explore temporal changes in Estonian sheep populations and their mitochondrial genetic diversity over the last 3000 years. We target a 558 base pair fragment of the mitochondrial hypervariable region in 115 ancien...

BACKGROUND Post-communist transition has had a huge impact on mortality in Eastern Europe. We examined how educational inequalities in mortality changed between 1990 and 2000 in Estonia, Lithuania, Poland and Hungary. METHODS Cross-sectional data for the years around 1990 and 2000 were used. Age-standardized mortality rates and mortality rate ratios (for total mortality only) were calculated ...

In the past decades of the history of Estonia, there have occurred few events which have profoundly affected and touched more or less the entire population of the country. One of these events was undoubtedly the loss of the motor vessel “Estonia” on September 28th 1994 on its way from Tallinn to Stockholm with 989 persons on board, of whom over 800 died1. More recently, the events which took pl...

AIM To describe cataract surgical services in 1998 in 12 eastern European countries and to identify their needs to reduce cataract blindness. METHODS All inpatient eye departments in the 12 countries received a standardised questionnaire; the data obtained were further processed at the coordinating centre in Prague. RESULTS All 458 eye departments in the region were involved. The response r...

BACKGROUND Sleep is an active and complex behavior, yet it has two straightforward properties-timing and duration. Clock genes are associated with dysfunctional timing of sleep, mood, and obesity disorders, which are commonly associated with sleep duration. METHODS Sleep duration was assessed in Central Europe, Estonia, and South Tyrol (n approximately 77,000) with the Munich ChronoType Quest...

The forest test site at Järvselja, Estonia is addressed in the new proposal for CHRIS multispectral multiangular acquisition. Short introduction of the test site, the previous work done, and the plans of using CHRIS data are described.

OBJECTIVES Allergic rhinitis and atopy are more common in urban than rural environments. Non-allergic rhinitis has not been studied to a great extent. We aimed to assess the relationship of rhinitis symptoms with different profiles of allergic sensitization, comparing this in rural and urban environments. METHODS The study population consisted of population-based cohorts of adults aged 26-60 ...

BACKGROUND During the last decade, sickness absence rates in Estonia have reached the level of Nordic countries. This places Estonia in a group of countries with the highest absence rate in the European Union. Unlike Nordic countries, factors associated with sickness absence have not been studied in Estonia. AIMS To investigate which work-related, individual and health factors, other than cur...