Outdoor air pollution is an important risk factor for cardiovascular disease throughout the world, with particulate air pollution alone responsible for over three million deaths each year. Increases in concentrations of daily air pollution are associated with acute myocardial infarction and admission to hospital or death from heart failure. These associations could be mediated through direct and indirect effects of exposure to air pollutants on vascular tone, endothelial function, thrombosis, and myocardial ischaemia.

Half the epidemiological studies with information about menopausal hormone therapy and ovarian cancer risk remain unpublished, and some retrospective studies could have been biased by selective participation or recall. We aimed to assess with minimal bias the effects of hormone therapy on ovarian cancer risk.

The Lancet presents the most recent update on the global, regional, and national causes of death. Against a backdrop of increased global improvements in life-expectancy, death rates for some causes – including drug use and liver cancer – continue to rise.

Incense burning is common in many parts of the world. Although it is perceived that particulate matter from incense smoke is deleterious to health, there is no epidemiologic evidence linking domestic exposure to cardiovascular mortality. The researchers examined the association between exposure to incense burning and cardiovascular mortality in the Singapore Chinese Health Study.

We previously reported an association between childhood leukaemia in Britain and proximity of the child’s address at birth to high-voltage power lines that declines from the 1960s to the 2000s. We test here whether a ‘corona-ion hypothesis’ could explain these results. This hypothesis proposes that corona ions, atmospheric ions produced by power lines and blown away from them by the wind, increase the retention of airborne pollutants in the airways when breathed in and hence cause disease.

The complex and unprecedented Ebola epidemic ongoing in West Africa has highlighted the need to review the epidemiological characteristics of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) as well as our current understanding of the transmission dynamics and the effect of control interventions against Ebola transmission. Here we review key epidemiological data from past Ebola outbreaks and carry out a comparative review of mathematical models of the spread and control of Ebola in the context of past outbreaks and the ongoing epidemic in West Africa.

More than 147 million people in the US live in areas where pollutant levels are above regulatory limits and pose a risk to health. Most of the vast network of air pollutant monitors in the US are located in places with higher pollution levels and a higher density of pollutant sources (e.g., point sources from industrial pollution). Vulnerable populations are more likely to live closer to pollutant sources, and thus closer to pollutant monitors.

To aid in prioritizing the development of tuberculosis (TB) vaccines most likely to reach the 2050 TB elimination goal, we estimated the impact and cost-effectiveness of a range of vaccine profiles in low- and middle-income countries. Using mathematical modeling, we show that vaccines targeted at adolescents/adults could have a much greater impact on the TB burden over a 2024–2050 time horizon than those vaccines targeted at infants. Such vaccines could also be cost-effective, even with relatively high vaccine prices.

Ebola is a deadly virus that causes frequent disease outbreaks in the human population. Here, we analyse its rate of new introductions, case fatality ratio, and potential to spread from person to person. The analysis is performed for all completed outbreaks, and for a scenario where these are augmented by a more severe outbreak of several thousand cases. The results show a fast rate of new outbreaks, a high case fatality ratio, and an effective reproductive ratio of just
less than 1.

The researchers linked the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s Air Toxics tract-level data with the Nurses’ Health Study, a prospective cohort of female nurses. Over the course of 18 years of follow-up from 1990 through 2008, they identified 425 incident cases of PD. The researchers examined the association of risk of PD with the following metals that were part of the first U.S. EPA collections in 1990, 1996, and 1999: arsenic, antimony, cadmium, chromium, lead, manganese, mercury, and nickel.