We used ecologic niche modeling of outbreaks and sporadic cases of filovirus-associated hemorrhagic fever (HF) to provide a large-scale perspective on the geographic and ecologic distributions of Ebola and Marburg viruses. We predicted that filovirus would occur across the Afrotropics: Ebola HF in the humid rain forests of central and western Africa, and Marburg HF in the drier and more open ar...

The Icelandic study of melanoma trends by Héry et al. in this issue of the Journal (Am J Epidemiol. 2010;172(7):762-767) is a fascinating analysis of an ecologic association. The authors noted a sharp increase in melanoma incidence that appeared to lag a few years behind the increased prevalence of sunbeds in Iceland. Caution, however, must be exercised in interpreting the data because of the l...

To the Editors: The recent article reporting no association of consumption of animal foods with risk of ovarian cancer (1) was based on an incomplete study (2). Whereas ecologic studies can find animal products as an important risk factor for breast cancer (2, 3), a more recent ecologic study based on ovarian cancer mortality rates for European countries for 1989 to 1991 and dietary data for th...

BACKGROUND In Orebro County, Sweden, a 2.5-fold increase in the incidence of Haemophilus influenzae (HI) meningitis was found between 1970 and 1980. In a case-control study of possible risk factors for invasive HI infection conducted in the same area, 1987-1992, breastfeeding was found to be a strong protective factor. MATERIAL AND METHODS In order to study the relation between incidence rate...

OBJECTIVE From 1986 to 1999, the suicide rate in the Edmonton Regional Health Authority (RHA) was greater than that in the Calgary RHA (mean rate ratio 1.4). We conducted a study to determine whether a similar relation holds for parasuicide, and if so, whether the pattern can be explained at the ecologic level by sociodemographic factors. METHODS The Edmonton and Calgary RHAs provided data on...

BACKGROUND The etiology of prostate cancer has not been fully resolved in the scientific and medical literature, although the non-fat portion of milk and calcium are emerging as leading dietary risk factors, with lycopene (found in tomatoes) and vitamin D apparently being risk reduction factors. METHODS The ecologic (multi-country statistical) approach is used to study dietary links to prosta...

Several ecologic factors have been proposed to describe the mechanisms whereby host ecology and the environment influence the transmission of avian influenza viruses (AIVs) in wild birds, including bird's foraging behavior, migratory pattern, seasonal congregation, the rate of recruitment of juvenile birds, and abiotic factors. However, these ecologic factors are derived from studies that have ...