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Few studies have reported on the accuracy of self‐reported hypertension history among older postmenopausal women, which was this study's objective. Participants were postmenopausal women enrolled in the Osteoporosis and Periodontal Disease (OsteoPerio) study, an ancillary investigation of the Women's Health Initiative Observational Study (WHI‐OS) at the Buffalo, New York, clinical site. Participants self‐reported their history of physician diagnosed hypertension treated with medication at WHI‐OS enrollment (1993–1998; n = 1342, mean age 63 years), then 3 years later at OsteoPerio enrollment (1997–2001; n = 1342), and again at OsteoPerio Year 5 follow‐up (2002–2005; n = 1020). At each time point, medication inventories were recorded and served as the criterion with which self‐report was compared in the present study. Physician diagnosed‐treated hypertension was also self‐reported annually on mailed health update questionnaires in the WHI‐OS and were compared against medication inventory at the subsequent clinic exam. Of those participants who self‐reported a history of hypertension at WHI enrollment, OsteoPerio enrollment, and OsteoPerio Year 5 follow‐up, 41.2%, 90.3%, and 94.4%, respectively, had anti‐hypertensive pills in their medication inventory. Across the three time points, sensitivity and specificity ranged from 0.72 to 0.98 and from 0.85 to 0.95, and kappa coefficients ranged from 0.52 to 0.79 when comparing self‐report with medication inventory. For self‐reported newly physician‐diagnosed and treated hypertension on the annual health update questionnaire, 88.4% and 95.2% of those reporting hypertension had anti‐hypertensive pills in the subsequent medication inventory. In general, sensitivity and kappa were lower in women aged ≥70 versus < 70 years and in those with history of cardiovascular disease and diabetes compared to those without these comorbidities. In this cohort of postmenopausal women, self‐reported physician diagnosed and treated hypertension demonstrated moderate to high accuracy when compared against anti‐hypertensive medication use documented by pill inventory, particularly for those who were younger and managing fewer comorbidities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

PurposeEpidemiological studies suggest that short sleep duration and poor sleep quality may increase breast cancer risk. However, whether sleep is associated with breast tumor aggressiveness characteristics has largely been unexplored.MethodsThe study included 4171 non-Hispanic whites (NHW) and 235 African Americans (AA) diagnosed with incident, primary, invasive breast cancer in the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) Observational Study (1994-2013). We used logistic regression to examine the association of baseline sleep (sleep duration, sleep quality, WHI Insomnia Rating Scale) with tumor grade, stage, hormone receptor status, HER2 status.ResultsIn NHW, women who reported 6 h of sleep/night were more likely to have tumors classified as regional/distant stage at diagnosis compared to women who slept 7-8 h/night (adjusted odds ratio (OR): 1.25, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.05-1.48). AA women who reported their typical night's sleep as 'average quality' or 'restless or very restless sleep' were more likely to be diagnosed with triple-negative tumors than those who reported 'sound or restful' sleep (adjusted ORs: 2.91 (1.11, 7.63) and 3.74 (1.10, 12.77), respectively).ConclusionsOur findings provide indications that aspects of sleep (sleep duration and quality), partially modifiable health behaviors, may be associated with development of aggressive tumor characteristics in postmenopausal women. The role of these sleep attributes may differ for NHW and AA women; however, further study in robust, racial diverse samples is needed. This study provides evidence that facets of sleep behavior are associated with the development of aggressive tumor features and these associations differ by race.

Aim: To examine the association of dietary patterns with periodontal disease (PD) and its progression over 5 years. Materials and Methods: Analyses involved 1197 post‐menopausal women from the OsteoPerio cohort. Dietary patterns assessed include Healthy Eating Index‐2015 (HEI), Alternative HEI (AHEI), Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) and alternate Mediterranean Diet (aMed) at baseline (the average of two food frequency questionnaires administered between 1993 and 2001). At baseline and the 5‐year follow‐up, periodontal assessments evaluated alveolar crestal height (ACH), probing pocket depth (PPD), clinical attachment loss (CAL), percentage of gingival sites bleeding on probing (%BOP) and missing teeth due to PD. Linear and logistic regression were used to examine the associations. Results: Cross‐sectionally, HEI and aMed were associated with smaller CAL and %BOP; along with DASH, they were associated with a decreased odds of teeth missing due to PD. AHEI and aMed were associated with a decreased odds of severe PD. Prospectively, AHEI was associated with greater ACH progression. This association was attenuated to the null after loss of ACH was imputed for teeth lost due to PD over follow‐up, or after excluding participants with diabetes, osteoporosis, hypertension or heart disease at baseline. Conclusions: Better adherence to healthy dietary patterns was associated with better PD measures cross‐sectionally but greater progression of ACH over 5 years. The latter might be explained by incident tooth loss due to PD and pre‐existing comorbidities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

PurposeMany dietary factors have either proinflammatory or anti-inflammatory properties. We previously developed a dietary inflammatory index (DII) to assess the inflammatory potential of diet. In this study, we conducted a construct validation of the DII based on data from a food frequency questionnaire and three inflammatory biomarkers in a subsample of 2567 postmenopausal women in the Women's Health Initiative Observational Study.MethodsWe used multiple linear and logistic regression models, controlling for potential confounders, to test whether baseline DII predicted concentrations of interleukin-6, high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP), tumor necrosis factor alpha receptor 2, or an overall biomarker score combining all three inflammatory biomarkers.ResultsThe DII was associated with the four biomarkers with beta estimates (95% confidence interval) comparing the highest with lowest DII quintiles as follows: interleukin-6: 1.26 (1.15-1.38), Ptrend < .0001; tumor necrosis factor alpha receptor 2: 81.43 (19.15-143.71), Ptrend = .004; dichotomized hs-CRP (odds ratio for higher vs. lower hs-CRP): 1.30 (0.97-1.67), Ptrend = .34; and the combined inflammatory biomarker score: 0.26 (0.12-0.40), Ptrend = .0001.ConclusionsThe DII was significantly associated with inflammatory biomarkers. Construct validity of the DII indicates its utility for assessing the inflammatory potential of diet and for expanding its use to include associations with common chronic diseases in future studies.

We report a genome-wide association study (GWAS) and admixture analysis of glaucoma in 12 008 African-American and Hispanic women (age 50-79 years) from the Women's Health Initiative (WHI). Although GWAS of glaucoma have been conducted on several populations, this is the first to look at glaucoma in individuals of African-American and Hispanic race/ethnicity. Prevalent and incident glaucoma was determined by self-report from study questionnaires administered at baseline (1993-1998) and annually through 2005. For African Americans, there was a total of 658 prevalent cases, 1062 incident cases and 6067 individuals who never progressed to glaucoma. For our replication cohort, we used the WHI Hispanics, including 153 prevalent cases, 336 incident cases and 2685 non-cases. We found an association of African ancestry with glaucoma incidence in African Americans (hazards ratio 1.62, 95% CI 1.023-2.56, P = 0.038) and in Hispanics (hazards ratio 3.21, 95% CI 1.32-7.80, P = 0.011). Although we found that no previously identified glaucoma SNPs replicated in either the WHI African Americans or Hispanics, a risk score combining all previously reported hits was significant in African-American prevalent cases (P = 0.0046), and was in the expected direction in the incident cases, as well as in the Hispanic incident cases. Additionally, after imputing to 1000 Genomes, two less common independent SNPs were suggestive in African Americans, but had too low of an allele frequency in Hispanics to test for replication. These results suggest the possibility of a distinct genetic architecture underlying glaucoma in individuals of African ancestry.

Few detailed data are available on the wide range of determinants of vitamin D status among postmenopausal women, and it is also unclear whether there may be undiscovered determinants. The objective of this study was to comprehensively evaluate determinants of serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] concentrations in a large cohort of postmenopausal women. Data from a subset of the Women's Health Initiative Observational Study were analyzed (50-79 y; n = 3345). Information on diet, lifestyle behaviors, secondhand smoke, use of dietary supplements and medication, chronic diseases, and anthropometry was collected at baseline (1993-1998) and on sun exposure at year 4 follow-up. Linear regression was performed to estimate regression coefficients (β). Significant determinants were total vitamin D intake (food plus supplements per 100 IU/d, β = 2.08), years of supplemental vitamin D use (β = 0.15), total fat intake (grams per day, β = -0.03), smoking status (β = -2.64, current vs. never), regional solar irradiance (β = 6.26, 475-500 vs. 300-325 Langleys), daylight time spent outdoors in summer (β = 5.15, >2 h vs.

In the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) trial of calcium plus vitamin D (CaD), we examined the treatment effect on incidence and mortality for all invasive cancers. Postmenopausal women (N = 36,282) were randomized to 1,000 mg of elemental calcium with 400 IU vitamin D3 or placebo. Cox models estimated risk of cancer incidence and mortality. After 7.0 yr, 1,306 invasive cancers were diagnosed in the supplement and 1,333 in the placebo group [hazard ratio (HR) = 0.98; CI = 0.90, 1.05, unweighted P = 0.54]. Mortality did not differ between supplement (315, annualized% = .26) and placebo [(347, 0.28%; P = 0.17; HR = 0.90 (0.77, 1.05)]. Significant treatment interactions on incident cancer were found for family history of cancer, personal total intake of vitamin D, smoking, and WHI dietary trial randomized group. Calcium/vitamin D supplementation did not reduce invasive cancer incidence or mortality. Supplementation lowered cancer risk in the WHI healthy diet trial arm and in women without a first-degree relative with cancer. The interactions are only suggestive given multiple testing considerations. The low vitamin D dose provided, limited adherence, and lack of serum 25(OH)D values should be considered when interpreting these findings.

BackgroundIt is unclear how well surrogate markers for vitamin D exposure (eg, oral intake of vitamin D and estimates of sunlight exposure), with and without consideration of other potential predictors of 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] concentrations, similarly rank individuals with respect to 25(OH)D blood concentrations.ObjectiveThe objective was to determine how much variation in serum 25(OH)D concentrations (nmol/L) could be explained by a predictive model with the use of different vitamin D surrogate markers (latitude of residence, mean annual regional solar irradiance estimates, and oral sources) and other individual characteristics that might influence vitamin D status.DesignA random sample of 3055 postmenopausal women (aged 50-70 y) participating in 3 nested case-control studies of the Women's Health Initiative Calcium plus Vitamin D Clinical Trial was used. Serum 25(OH)D values, assessed at year 1 (1995-2000), and potential predictors of 25(OH)D concentrations, assessed at year 1 or Women's Health Initiative baseline (1993-1998), were used.ResultsMore than half of the women (57.1%) had deficient (

We conducted a scoping review of studies examining ambient air pollution as a risk factor for chronic eye disease influencing the lens, retina, and intraocular pressure in adults. Terms related to air pollution and eye disease outcomes were used to search for publications on Embase, Web of Science Core Collection, Global Health, PubMed, and the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials from January 1, 2010, through April 11, 2022. We identified 27 articles, focusing on the following non-mutually exclusive outcomes: cataract (n = 9), presbyopia (n = 1), retinal vein occlusion or central retinal arteriolar and venular equivalents (n = 5), intraocular pressure (IOP) (n = 3), glaucoma (n = 5), age-related macular degeneration (AMD) (n = 5), diabetic retinopathy (n = 2), and measures of retinal morphology (n = 3). Study designs included cross-sectional (n = 16), case–control (n = 4), and longitudinal (n = 7). Air pollutants were measured in 50% and 95% of the studies on lens and retina or IOP, respectively, and these exposures were assigned to geographic locations. Most research was conducted in global regions with high exposure to air pollution. Consistent associations suggested a possibly increased risk of cataract and retina-associated chronic eye disease with increasing exposure to particulate matter (PM2.5-PM10), NO2, NOx, and SO2. Associations with O3 were less consistent. Accumulating research suggests air pollution may be a modifiable risk factor for chronic eye diseases of the lens and retina. The number of studies on each specific lens- or retina-related outcome is limited. Guidelines regarding the role of air pollution in chronic eye disease do not exist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examined the association between self-reported sleep quality, sleep duration, and dietary patterns among police officers in the Buffalo Cardio-Metabolic Occupational Stress (BCOPS) study. 422 police officers aged 21–74 (2004–2009). We used a cross-sectional study design and obtained sleep quality and duration from responses to the 19-item Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index. Using 46 energy-adjusted food groups derived from a 125-item food frequency questionnaire, we identified dietary patterns using exploratory factor analysis. Multiple linear regression analysis was used to examine the associations of sleep quality and duration with the derived dietary patterns. We identified major dietary patterns: fruits and vegetables (FV), dairy products, starches and fried foods, and meat and eggs. Individuals with poor sleep quality had a lower average FV score than those with optimal sleep (β [SE] = −0.32 [0.13]; p =.01). Significant interactions were observed between sex and the FV and dairy products dietary patterns, where women with poor sleep quality had a lower mean FV score compared to women with optimal sleep quality (β [SE] = −0.81 [0.29]; p =.01). Women with < 6 hours sleep duration had a lower mean dairy score compared to women with ≥ 7 hours sleep duration (β [SE] = −0.69 [0.29]; p =.02). We did not observe these associations among men. Among women, good sleep quality and long sleep duration were associated with a dietary pattern high in consumption of both fruits and vegetables and dairy products. Abbreviations: BCOPS: Buffalo Cardio-Metabolic Occupational Stress study; BMI: body mass index; FFQ: food frequency questionnaire; FV: fruits and vegetables; KMO: Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin test; MET: metabolic equivalent of task score; PSQI: Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index questionnaire [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]