Sex and Socioeconomic Disparities in Dementia Risk: A Population-Attributable Fraction Analysis in Argentina.

INTRODUCTION: Twelve modifiable risk factors (RFs) account for 40% of dementia cases worldwide. However, limited data exist on such factors in middle- and low-income countries. We aimed to estimate the population-attributable fractions (PAFs) for the 12 RFs in Argentina, assessing changes over a decade and exploring socioeconomic and sex influences. METHODS: We conducted cross-sectional analyses of the 12 RFs from Argentinian surveys conducted in 2009, 2015, and 2018, including 96,321 people. We calculated PAFs and stratified estimates based on sex and income. RESULTS: We estimated an overall PAF of 59.6% (95% CI = 58.9-60.3%). The largest PAFs were hypertension = 9.3% (8.7-9.9%), physical inactivity = 7.4% (6.8-8.2%), and obesity = 7.4% (6.8-7.9%). Men were more impacted by excessive alcohol, while women by isolation and smoking. Lower income linked to higher PAFs in education, hypertension, and obesity. DISCUSSION: Argentina has a higher PAF for dementia than the world population, with distinct RF distribution. PAF varied by sex and economic status, advocating tailored prevention strategies.

Using Online Social Networks to Acquire Political Information: the Politically Engaged Non-ideological Youth in Chile, 2017-2019.

This paper assesses the impact of age and ideological identification on the left-right scale on the use of online social networks to acquire political information. Socio-demographic indicators and ideological identification have been found to impact democratic engagement and the access and use of social networks. In countries where the digital divide (access to the internet) and digital inequality (use of the internet) coexist, the impact of socio-demographic indicators is stronger, as those with fewer tools and resources have less access and make less use of social networks for democratic engagement. We postulate three hypotheses on the effect of socio-demographic determinants and ideological identification and test them using 6 national polls conducted between 2017 and 2019 in Chile, a middle-income country with high levels of inequality. Though socio-demographic variables and ideological identification impact the use of social networks to acquire political information, young people who do not identify on the ideological scale are as likely to use social networks to obtain political information as older people who identify on the left-right scale. As generational replacement kicks in, online democratic engagement will become more intense. Even the non-ideological youth is more politically engaged than the ideologically identified older age cohorts.

Assessing the relationship between multimorbidity and depression in older men and women: the International Mobility in Aging Study (IMIAS).

Objectives: Our study aims to assess whether multimorbidity is an independent risk factor for the development of depression in older adults living in Canada, Brazil, Colombia, and Albania and examines differences in incidence of depression regarding social and psychosocial characteristics.Methods: The longitudinal International Mobility Aging Study (IMIAS) collected information from adults between 65-74 years old. Depression was defined by a 16 or higher score assessed by the Centre for Epidemiological Studies Depression (CES-D) Scale. Multimorbidity was defined as having two or more chronic conditions, which were self-reported by participants using a list of eight physical chronic conditions. Poisson regression was performed to estimate the relative risk of depression in older adults with multimorbidity compared to those living with 0-1 chronic conditions, adjusting for sex, age, education, number of doctor visits, degree of assistance needed, social support, and smoking status. The analysis was stratified by study region (Canada; Latin America; Albania).Results: Crude and adjusted models showed no statistically significant associations between multimorbidity and the incidence of depression in any of the study regions, confirmed by sensitivity analyses. However, the incidence of depression varied across study region, confirmed by the intra-class correlation coefficient which indicated that 13% of variations in depression incidence were due to geographic differences.Conclusion: Multimorbidity does not appear to increase the risk of developing depression in older adults between 65-74. Higher rates of depression in Latin America and Albania (compared to Canada) may be attributed to lifecourse exposures to social and economic adversity in these regions.

Response patterns of young children from two contrasting SES contexts to different numerical tasks with numbers 1-5.

This study contributes to a multifaceted picture of young children's emergent number knowledge by focusing on the variety of ways in which children express and use quantitative information. The authors' aims are to (a) explore the extent to which quantifying collections 1-5 and using that information pose different levels of difficulty to children from 33 to 47 months old, (b) identify intra- and intertask response patterns, and (c) analyze the influence of socioeconomic status and age on these response patterns. Sixty-six children from two contrasting socioeconomic status groups (very low and middle) were asked to solve tasks with 1-5 elements in the context of a game. Using quantitative information turned out to be more complex than quantification. Intra- and intertask response patterns showed that children gradually come to understand the first five numerical values according to the numerical sequence in a much less strict way than that proposed by the cardinal-knowers model that posits that children progress in an orderly way in their number knowledge. Children in different ages and socioeconomic status groups were found to be more similar to each other when the whole arc of responses provided was considered than when solely correct performance was measured.