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Background: This study aimed to assess the long-term effects of size-specific particulate matter (PM) on frailty transitions in middle-aged and older Chinese adults., Methods: We included 13 910 participants ≥45 y of age from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) for 2015 and 2018 who were classified into three categories in 2015 according to their frailty states: robust, prefrail and frail. Air quality data were obtained from the National Urban Air Quality Real-time Publishing Platform. A two-level logistic regression model was used to examine the association between concentrations of PM and frailty transitions., Results: At baseline, the total number of robust, prefrail and frail participants were 7516 (54.0%), 4324 (31.1%) and 2070 (14.9%), respectively. Significant associations were found between PM concentrations and frailty transitions. For each 10 μg/m3 increase in the 3-y averaged 2.5-μm PM (PM2.5) concentrations, the risk of worsening in frailty increased in robust (odds ratio [OR] 1.06 [95% confidence interval {CI} 1.01 to 1.12]) and prefrail (OR 1.07 [95% CI 1.01 to 1.13]) participants, while the probability of improvement in frailty in prefrail (OR 0.91 [95% CI 0.84 to 0.98]) participants decreased. In addition, the associations of PM10 and coarse fraction of PM with frailty transitions showed similar patterns., Conclusions: Long-term exposure to PM was associated with higher risks of worsening and lower risks of improvement in frailty among middle-aged and older adults in China., (© The Author(s) 2023. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.)

Background: Neural tube defects (NTDs) are congenital birth defects of the central nervous system that affect 0.5-2 per 1000 pregnancies worldwide. Therefore effective interventions for birth defects, especially NTDs, are very important., Methods: Yuanping City is a coal mining city in Shanxi Province, China, with a high incidence of NTDs. This study evaluates the effects of NTD interventions in this city after adjusting for covariates that characterize the native environment. The number of NTD cases and births for the 18 towns in Yuanping City from 2007 to 2014 were included in the study. A shared-component zero-inflated Poisson regression was applied to analyse the temporal-spatial variance among the incidence rates of NTDs in Yuanping City before and after the interventions., Results: The results showed that existing interventions to mitigate birth defects, such as folic acid supplementation, reduced the incidence of NTDs by 53.5% in coal mining areas in Yuanping City. However, the NTD risk in areas near coal mines, especially unrestored coal mines, was still high, even after the intervention., Conclusions: The government should focus on health hazards related to mining and agricultural production and should provide education and resources to reduce environmental exposure. Reducing environmental risks should be regarded as an early intervention strategy to mitigate birth defects., (© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.)

Background: Esophageal cancer (EC) is one of the most common cancers, causing many people to die every year worldwide. Accurate estimations of the spatial distribution of EC are essential for effective cancer prevention., Methods: EC mortality surveillance data covering 964 surveyed counties in China in 2014 and three classes of auxiliary data, including physical condition, living habits and living environment data, were collected. Genetic programming (GP), a hierarchical Bayesian model and sandwich estimation were used to estimate the spatial distribution of female EC mortality. Finally, we evaluated the accuracy of the three mapping methods., Results: The results show that compared with the root square mean error (RMSE) of the hierarchical Bayesian model at 6.546 and the sandwich estimation at 7.611, the RMSE of GP is the lowest at 5.894. According to the distribution estimated by GP, the mortality of female EC was low in some regions of Northeast China, Northwest China and southern China; in some regions downstream of the Yellow River Basin, north of the Yangtze River in the Yangtze River Basin and in Southwest China, the mortality rate was relatively high., Conclusions: This paper provides an accurate map of female EC mortality in China. A series of targeted preventive measures can be proposed based on the spatial disparities displayed on the map., (© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.)