Neighborhood Child Opportunity Index and Adolescent Cardiometabolic Risk.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: The Child Opportunity Index (ChOI) is a publicly available surveillance tool that incorporates traditional and novel attributes of neighborhood conditions that may promote or inhibit healthy child development. The extent to which ChOI relates to individual-level cardiometabolic risk remains unclear. METHODS: We geocoded residential addresses obtained from 743 participants in midchildhood (mean age 7.9 years) in Project Viva, a prebirth cohort from eastern Massachusetts, and linked each location with census tract-level ChOI data. We measured adiposity and cardiometabolic outcomes in midchildhood and early adolescence (mean age 13.1 years) and analyzed their associations with neighborhood-level ChOI in midchildhood using mixed-effects models, adjusting for individual and family sociodemographics. RESULTS: On the basis of nationwide distributions of ChOI, 11.2% (n = 83) of children resided in areas of very low overall opportunity (ChOI score <20 U) and 55.3% (n = 411) resided in areas of very high (ChOI score ≥80 U) overall opportunity. Children who resided in areas with higher overall opportunity in midchildhood had persistently lower levels of C-reactive protein from midchildhood to early adolescence (per 25-U increase in ChOI score: ß = .14 mg/L; 95% confidence interval, .28 to .00). Additionally, certain ChOI indicators, such as greater number of high-quality childhood education centers, greater access to healthy food, and greater proximity to employment in midchildhood, were associated with persistently lower adiposity, C-reactive protein levels, insulin resistance, and metabolic risk z scores from midchildhood to early adolescence. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest more favorable neighborhood opportunities in midchildhood predict better cardiometabolic health from midchildhood to early adolescence.

A deep-learning system for the assessment of cardiovascular disease risk via the measurement of retinal-vessel calibre.

Retinal blood vessels provide information on the risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD). Here, we report the development and validation of deep-learning models for the automated measurement of retinal-vessel calibre in retinal photographs, using diverse multiethnic multicountry datasets that comprise more than 70,000 images. Retinal-vessel calibre measured by the models and by expert human graders showed high agreement, with overall intraclass correlation coefficients of between 0.82 and 0.95. The models performed comparably to or better than expert graders in associations between measurements of retinal-vessel calibre and CVD risk factors, including blood pressure, body-mass index, total cholesterol and glycated-haemoglobin levels. In retrospectively measured prospective datasets from a population-based study, baseline measurements performed by the deep-learning system were associated with incident CVD. Our findings motivate the development of clinically applicable explainable end-to-end deep-learning systems for the prediction of CVD on the basis of the features of retinal vessels in retinal photographs.

[Variation in Pollutant Concentrations and Correlation Analysis with the Vegetation Index in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei].

Based on 2017 hourly air quality monitoring data, NDVI 16 d synthetic data, and socio-economic data, the air pollution characteristics of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei were systematically analyzed, and its variation, normalized vegetation index, and the relationship between the index (NDVI) and its impact on socio-economic factors, were analyzed by linear regression analysis and a geographically weighted regression model. The conclusions are as follows:①The overall air pollution in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region is characterized by high-level pollution over the southern plain areas and low-level pollution over the northern mountainous areas. The air pollution increases from north to south, and shows significant spatial heterogeneity. ②From the perspective of seasonal changes, the overall order winter > autumn > spring > summer is observed, and atmospheric pollution in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region shows significant temporal heterogeneity. ③The concentrations of pollutants such as SO2, NO2, CO, PM2.5, and PM10 all have a negative correlation with the NDVI value. Assuming that natural conditions such as climate and topography are relatively consistent, the lower the NDVI value, the more obvious the interference of human activities, the more concentrated the industrial economy layout, and the greater the pollution emissions, the more significant the negative impact on air quality. ④The NDVI reflects the land use, population distribution, and industrial layout to a certain extent, and these factors directly or indirectly determine the level of air pollution emissions and thus indicate the pollution distribution characteristics of the region. ⑤The results of the GWR model calculation show that the higher the level of economic development, the better the correlation between the NDVI and socioeconomic factors, PM2.5, and other pollutant concentrations. The distribution of the NDVI can generally reflect the level of social and economic development. The distribution of the NDVI also correlates to the distribution of PM2.5 to a certain extent.

Assessment of retinal vascular calibres as a biomarker of disease activity in birdshot chorioretinopathy.

PURPOSE: Birdshot chorioretinopathy (BCR) is a potentially blinding ocular disorder involving the retinal vasculature and choroid without any systemic manifestations. The objective of the study was to describe vascular calibre changes in BCR and analyse the possibility of this optical biomarker for staging and monitoring disease activity in BCR. METHODS: This retrospective case-control study at a tertiary referral eye centre in the UK included 33 eyes from 21 patients with BCR and equal number of eyes from control subjects. Diagnosis of BCR was confirmed on fundus fluorescein and indocyanine green angiography. Vascular calibres were measured using validated semiautomated software. RESULTS: Patients with BCR had smaller retinal venular calibres central retinal venular equivalent (CRVE) than controls (211.3 versus 227.9 µm, p = 0.008). After adjusting for variables, the difference between the two groups for CRVE at baseline was statistically significant based on two different analysis methods. Central retinal venular equivalent (CRVE) was lower at the 6-month follow-up visit (206.2 versus 213.8 µm, p-value = 0.03), and arteriole-to-venule ratio was larger (0.74 versus 0.71, p = 0.04) in subjects with BCR. Arteriolar calibre (CRAE) remained the same. CONCLUSION: This study provides novel insight into the pattern of vascular involvement in BCR. There was significant difference in the CRVE in patients with BCR. More studies are needed to correlate this data with visual function and treatment outcome and to validate the findings.