Medical birth registries are valuable sources of information about maternal and newborn’s health. In North-West Russia the registries were initiated in 1997 in the city of Monchegorsk and for all of Murmansk County in 2005. In this thesis we demonstrated the effectiveness of these data sources for surveillance of birth defects with the following objectives: (i) estimated changes in prevalence of ...

Recently it has been suggested that the chronic inflammatory disease psoriasis is more than skin deep, as it has been associated with several comorbid conditions, including diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Increasing prevalence of psoriasis has been observed, possibly due to changes in lifestyle. Within the population-based Tromsø study cohort, we found an increase in the self-reported prevalence ...

<b>BACKGROUND: </b> The concept of "patient pathways" in cancer care is most commonly understood as clinical pathways, operationalized as standardized packages of health care based on guidelines for the condition in question. In this understanding, patient pathways do not address multimorbidity or patient experiences and preferences. This study explored patient pathways understood as the individual ...

Coffee is the most widely drunk beverage around the world, especially within Scandinavia.However, there have been conflicting evidence on the consumption of coffee as a risk factor for cardiovascular diseases. The importance to explore the full effects of coffee related health problems, including brewing methods, is mainly due to the high consumption rate of coffee around the world. In the context ...

This is a study of suicides in the Nenets Autonomous Okrug (NAO), a region with a large proportion of indigenous Nenets. To our knowledge, this is the first study investigating the problem of suicide in the indigenous and non-indigenous populations of the Russian Arctic. Our study aim was to assess suicide rates in the indigenous and non-indigenous populations of the NAO, as well as the socio-demographic ...

BACKGROUND Obesity is a serious childhood health problem today. Studies have shown that overweight and obesity tend to be stable (track) from birth, through childhood and adolescence, to adulthood. However, existing studies are heterogeneous; there is still no consensus on the strength of the association between high birth weight or high body mass index (BMI) early in life and overweight and ...

BACKGROUND Smoking during pregnancy leads to adverse maternal and birth outcomes. However, the prevalence of smoking among women in Russia has increased from < 5 % in the 1980s to > 20 % in the 2000s. We conducted a registry-based study in Murmansk County, Northwest Russia. Our aims were twofold: (i) assess the prevalence of smoking before and during pregnancy; and (ii) examine the socio-demographic ...

Background: Obesity remains a serious but preventable challenge of our time, and it has been linked to many comorbidities. This study uses body mass index (BMI) as a measure of obesity to investigate the relationship between low and high BMI and total cancer incidence, as well as some common specific cancers. These relationships were explored in relatively young subjects who may lose more life years ...

During the 20th century, humans have been exposed to an increasing number of persistent organic pollutants (POPs). However, due to restrictions on use and the banning of several POPs, environmental concentrations of POPs have generally decreased since the 1980s. POPs are transferred to humans primarily through diet and are transferred from the mother to the foetus during pregnancy and to infants ...

Background: Self-reported atrial fibrillation (AF) and diagnoses from hospital registers are often used to identify persons with AF. The objective of this study was to validate self-reported AF and hospital discharge diagnoses of AF among participants in a population-based study. Materials and methods: Among 50,805 persons who participated in the third survey of the HUNT Study (HUNT3), 16,247 ...