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Smoking is the most well-established cause of chronic airflow obstruction (CAO) but particulate air pollution and poverty have also been implicated. We regressed sex-specific prevalence of CAO from 41 Burden of Obstructive Lung Disease study sites against smoking prevalence from the same study, the gross national income per capita and the local annual mean level of ambient particulate matter (PM2.5) using negative binomial regression. The prevalence of CAO was not independently associated with PM2.5but was strongly associated with smoking and was also associated with poverty. Strengthening tobacco control and improved understanding of the link between CAO and poverty should be prioritised.

Diabetes is a cause of at least a third of all deaths in Mexican adults aged 35–74 years, with the excess mortality due mainly to vascular disease, renal disease, infection, and acute diabetic crises. We aimed to analyse the effect of diabetes duration and glycaemic control on death rate ratios (RRs) for these causes and to assess the relevance to cause-specific mortality of undiagnosed diabetes.

COPD ranks within the top three causes of mortality in the global burden of disease, yet it remains largely underdiagnosed. We assessed the underdiagnosis of COPD and its determinants in national and international surveys of general populations.

The health survey, the 12-Item Short-Form (SF-12) survey instrument, was developed as a shorter alternative to the SF-36 for use in scale studies. The aim of our study was to adapt this instrument into Moroccan Arabic and to examine its psychometric properties. The SF-12 was translated from English to dialectical Moroccan Arabic following the International Quality of Life Assessment translation procedure. The psychometric properties were tested in September 2007. Testing involved a sample of families and friends of patients ( 16 years old) in the diagnostic centre of the Fez University hospital, Morocco. The SF-12 was assessed by examining item-level characteristics, estimates of scale reliability (internal consistency) and construct validity. The study was conducted on 141 subjects. The physical component summary (PCS-12) and the mental health component summary (MCS-12) of the SF-12 demonstrated good internal consistency reliability, with alpha coefficients of 0.80 and 0.79, respectively. Multitrait analysis showed that the subscales of the SF-12 had good convergent and discriminant validity. Construct validity, assessed by the method of extreme groups, determined that the SF-12 summary scores varied for individuals who differed according to age and medical conditions. The Moroccan Arabic version of the SF-12 appears to be a valid tool with which to for assess the health status of the general Moroccan population. On the other hand, issues such as test-retest reliability, longitudinal construct validity and responsiveness were not addressed in this study and should be considered in future ones.