BACKGROUND General practitioners (GPs) use gut feelings to diagnose cancer in an early stage, but little is known about its impact. METHOD Prospective cohort study of patients in 44 general practices throughout the Netherlands, from January 2010 until December 2013. GPs completed a questionnaire regarding gut feelings, patient and GP characteristics, if they noticed a cancer-related gut feeli...

OBJECTIVES Cohort studies must collect data from their participants as economically as possible, while maintaining response rates. This randomized controlled trial investigated whether offering a choice of online or paper questionnaires resulted in improved response rates compared with offering online first. STUDY DESIGN AND SETTING Eligible participants were young people in the Avon Longitud...

BACKGROUND In high-income countries, great disparities exist in the organizational characteristics of maternity health services. In Finland, primary maternity care is provided at communal maternity health clinics (MHC). At these MHCs there are public health nurses and general practitioners providing care. The structure of services in MHCs varies largely. MHCs are maintained independently or mer...

Genomic imprinting is a form of epigenetic regulation in mammals in which the same allele of a gene is expressed differently depending on the parental origin of the allele. Traditionally, the detection of imprinted genes that affect complex diseases has been focused on linkage designs with pedigrees or case-parent designs with case-parent trios. In the past two decades, the birth cohort design ...

PURPOSE In elderly patients, deep and subcortical white matter hyperintense lesions are frequently observed on MRI; however, the growth process of these lesions is unclear. The aims of this retrospective cohort study were to elucidate the growth characteristics of deep and subcortical white matter hyperintense lesions, and to insight their etiology. MATERIALS AND METHODS We enrolled 103 patie...

BACKGROUND In recent decades, there has been an increase in the prevalence of childhood overweight in most high-income countries. Within northern Europe, prevalence tends to be higher in the UK compared with the Scandinavian countries. We aimed to study differences in body mass index (BMI) trajectories between large cohorts of children from UK and Scandinavian populations. METHODS We compared...

BACKGROUND Several aspects of school life are thought to be associated with increased risk of self-harm in adolescence, but these have rarely been investigated in prospective studies. METHODS Members of the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) birth cohort completed postal surveys of school experiences aged 14, and self-harm behaviour aged 16 (n=3939). Associations between...

OBJECTIVE The present study examined whether maternal diet and early infant feeding experiences relating to being breast-fed and complementary feeding influence the range of healthy foods consumed in later childhood. DESIGN Data from four European birth cohorts were studied. Healthy Plate Variety Score (HPVS) was calculated using FFQ. HPVS assesses the variety of healthy foods consumed within...

Objective The appropriate choice of a contraceptive method has been a major issue in reproductive health research. Cu T intrauterine device (Cu T IUD) has been introduced as one of the most effective contraceptive methods in the world, however, the relationship between prior use of Cu T IUD and secondary infertility has not been evaluated in Iran. To examine the association of Cu T-380A IUD and...