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President Donald Trump on March 21 incorrectly claimed personal data published in files on President John F. Kennedy’s death belonged to “long gone” people.

We measure the change in household spending caused by receipt of the economic stimulus payments of 2008, using questions added to the Consumer Expenditure Survey and variation from the randomized timing of disbursement. Households spent 12–30 percent (depending on specification) of their payments on nondurable goods during the three-month period of payment receipt, and a significant amount more on durable goods, primarily vehicles, bringing the total response to 50–90 percent of the payments. The responses are substantial and significant for older, lower-income, and home-owning households. Spending does not vary significantly with the method of disbursement (check versus electronic transfer). (JEL D12, D14, E21, E62)

On the basis of long-term follow-up data from the National Polyp Study, the authors estimate that mortality from colorectal cancer was about 50% lower among patients who had adenomatous polyps removed than in the general population. It has been a long-standing belief that screening for colorectal cancer can affect mortality from the disease in two ways: by detecting cancers at an early, curable stage and by detecting and removing adenomas. 1 Detection of early-stage colorectal cancer has been shown to be associated with a reduction in mortality from colorectal cancer in screening trials. 2 – 4 However, an adenomatous polyp is a much more common neoplastic finding on endoscopic screening. We previously reported that colonoscopic polypectomy in the National Polyp Study (NPS) cohort reduced the incidence of colorectal cancer. 5 An important question is whether the cancers prevented by colonoscopic . . .

Objective To study the association between benzodiazepine prescribing patterns including dose, type, and dosing schedule and the risk of death from drug overdose among US veterans receiving opioid analgesics.Design Case-cohort study.Setting Veterans Health Administration (VHA), 2004-09.Participants US veterans, primarily male, who received opioid analgesics in 2004-09. All veterans who died from a drug overdose (n=2400) while receiving opioid analgesics and a random sample of veterans (n=420 386) who received VHA medical services and opioid analgesics.Main outcome measure Death from drug overdose, defined as any intentional, unintentional, or indeterminate death from poisoning caused by any drug, determined by information on cause of death from the National Death Index.Results During the study period 27% (n=112 069) of veterans who received opioid analgesics also received benzodiazepines. About half of the deaths from drug overdose (n=1185) occurred when veterans were concurrently prescribed benzodiazepines and opioids. Risk of death from drug overdose increased with history of benzodiazepine prescription: adjusted hazard ratios were 2.33 (95% confidence interval 2.05 to 2.64) for former prescriptions versus no prescription and 3.86 (3.49 to 4.26) for current prescriptions versus no prescription. Risk of death from drug overdose increased as daily benzodiazepine dose increased. Compared with clonazepam, temazepam was associated with a decreased risk of death from drug overdose (0.63, 0.48 to 0.82). Benzodiazepine dosing schedule was not associated with risk of death from drug overdose.Conclusions Among veterans receiving opioid analgesics, receipt of benzodiazepines was associated with an increased risk of death from drug overdose in a dose-response fashion.

Most data on the clinical epidemiology of atrial fibrillation (AF) are reported from Western populations, and data for Asians are limited. We aimed to investigate the 10-year trends of the prevalence and incidence of non-valvular AF and provide prevalence projections till 2060 in Korea. We also investigated the annual risks of adverse outcomes among patients with AF. Using the Korean National Health Insurance Service database involving the entire Korean population, a total of 679,416 adults with newly diagnosed AF were identified from 2006 to 2015. The incidence and prevalence of AF and risk of adverse outcomes following AF onset were assessed. The prevalence of AF progressively increased by 2.10-fold from 0.73% in 2006 to 1.53% in 2015. The trend of its incidence was flat with a 10-year overall incidence of 1.77 per 1,000 person-years. The prevalence of AF is expected to reach 5.81% (2,290,591 patients with AF) in 2060. For a decade, the risk of all-cause mortality following AF declined by 30% (adjusted hazard ratio [HR]: 0.70, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.68–0.72), heart failure by 52% (adjusted HR: 0.48, 95% CI: 0.44–0.51), and ischemic stroke by 9% (adjusted HR: 0.91, 95% CI: 0.88–0.93). The burden of AF among Asian patients is increasing. Although the overall risks of cardiovascular events and death following AF onset have decreased over a decade, the event rates are still high. Optimized management of any associated comorbidities should be part of the holistic management approach for patients with AF.

ObjectiveTemporal changes in the healthcare burden of atrial fibrillation (AF) are less well known in rapidly ageing Asian countries. We examined trends in hospitalisations, costs, treatment patterns and outcomes related to AF in Korea.MethodsUsing the National Health Insurance Service (NHIS) database involving the entire adult Korean population (n=41 701 269 in 2015), we analysed a nationwide AF cohort representing 931 138 patients with AF. We studied all hospitalisations due to AF from 2006 to 2015.ResultsOverall, hospitalisations for AF increased by 420% from 767 to 3986 per 1 million Korean population from 2006 to 2015. Most admissions occurred in patients aged ≥70 years, and the most frequent coexisting conditions were hypertension, heart failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Hospitalisations mainly due to major bleeding and AF control increased, whereas hospitalisations mainly due to ischaemic stroke and myocardial infarction decreased. The total cost of care increased even after adjustment for inflation from €68.4 million in 2006 to €388.4 million in 2015, equivalent to 0.78% of the Korean NHIS total expenditure. Overall in-hospital mortality decreased from 7.5% in 2006 to 4.3% in 2015. The in-hospital mortality was highest in patients ≥80 years of age (7.7%) and in patients with chronic kidney disease (7.4%).ConclusionsAF hospitalisations have increased exponentially over the past 10 years in Korea, in association with an increase in comorbid chronic diseases. Mortality associated with AF hospitalisations decreased during the last decade, but hospitalisation costs have markedly increased.

Objectives. To examine how excess mortality during the COVID-19 pandemic differed by legal status and its intersections with sociodemographic factors, overall and among working-age Latinos. Methods. Using death records from Californian adults (aged ≥ 25 years) with a natural cause of death, we estimated excess mortality between March 2020 and May 2023, using ARIMA (autoregressive integrated moving average) models fit to prepandemic data spanning January 2016 through February 2020. We used country of birth and social security number (SSN) to classify decedents as US-born, foreign-born with a valid SSN (“documented”), or foreign-born without a valid SSN (“undocumented”). We assessed intersectional disparities with 5 sociodemographic factors. Results. Pandemic period relative excess mortality was twice as high among undocumented as documented immigrants. Across subgroups, undocumented Latino essential workers experienced the highest relative excess mortality (91% increase; 95% prediction interval [PI] = 60%, 138%); US-born White adults experienced the lowest relative excess mortality (8% increase; 95% PI = 3%, 14%). Conclusions. Undocumented legal status increased the risk of death during the pandemic among immigrants in California. Public Health Implications. Our findings urge attention to the exclusion of immigrants from health care and social services in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. ( Am J Public Health. 2025;115(10):1681–1690. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2025.308150 )

Information about an individual's place and date of birth can be exploited to predict his or her Social Security number (SSN). Using only publicly available information, we observed a correlation between individuals' SSNs and their birth data and found that for younger cohorts the correlation allows statistical inference of private SSNs. The inferences are made possible by the public availability of the Social Security Administration's Death Master File and the widespread accessibility of personal information from multiple sources, such as data brokers or profiles on social networking sites. Our results highlight the unexpected privacy consequences of the complex interactions among multiple data sources in modern information economies and quantify privacy risks associated with information revelation in public forums.

Previous studies have found a markedly reduced risk of cancer among Huntington’s disease (HD) patients with CAG ≥ 40, but data on cancer risk at shorter repeat numbers are lacking. The study includes 8149 subjects from Northern Sweden Health and Disease Study. Genotyping yielded a large number of intermediate allele carriers (IA, CAG n 27–35, ( n  = 497), normal alleles (CAG n 17–26, n  = 6584), short alleles (CAG ≤ 16, n  = 169) and 31 subjects with > 35 repeats, including reduced penetrance alleles (36–39; not guaranteed to suffer HD symptoms during a normal lifespan) and HD alleles > 39. Cancer diagnoses were retrieved from the Swedish Cancer Registry and the Hospital Discharge Registry and death certificates. We used Kaplan-Meier curves and Cox proportional hazard models to estimate the time to cancer, on strata of the population created by CAG repeat number intervals. Smoking status, BMI, as well as alcohol consumption were included in the models. 2735 participants (33.6%) had ≥ 1 cancer type. The Hazard-Ratio (HR) for IA carriers compared with normal alleles was similar, 0.97 CI 0.82–1.15). The reduced penetrance allele group (CAG n 36–39, n  = 29) had HR of 0.54 CI 0.22–1.30 similar to what has been reported with a full penetrance allele. Intermediate allele carriers as a group did not have a reduced risk of cancer. It remains possible that reduced penetrance alleles confer lower risk of cancer, with signs of a dose-dependent protective effect of CAG repeat length. The latter finding needs to be confirmed in even larger cohorts as these repeat numbers are relatively rare.

Comprehensive, individual-level social determinants of health (SDOH) are not collected in national transplant registries, limiting research aimed at understanding the relationship between SDOH and waitlist outcomes among kidney transplant candidates. We merged Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network data with individual-level SDOH data from LexisNexis, a commercial data vendor, and conducted a competing risk analysis to determine the association between individual-level SDOH and the cumulative incidence of living donor kidney transplant (LDKT), deceased donor kidney transplant (DDKT), and waitlist mortality. We included adult kidney transplant candidates placed on the waiting list in 2020, followed through December 2023. In multivariable analysis, having public insurance (Medicare or Medicaid), less than a college degree, and any type of derogatory record (liens, history of eviction, bankruptcy and/ felonies) were associated with lower likelihood of LDKT. Compared with patients with estimated individual annual incomes ≤ $30,000, patients with incomes ≥ $120,000 were more likely to receive a LDKT (sub distribution hazard ratio (sHR), 2.52; 95% confidence interval (CI), 2.03-3.12). Being on Medicare (sHR, 1.49; 95% CI, 1.42-1.57), having some college or technical school, or at most a high school diploma were associated with a higher likelihood of DDKT. Compared with patients with incomes ≤ $30,000, patients with incomes ≥ $120,000 were less likely to receive a DDKT (sHR, 0.60; 95% CI, 0.51-0.71). Lower individual annual income, having public insurance, at most a high school diploma, and a record of liens or eviction were associated with higher waitlist mortality. Patients with adverse individual-level SDOH were less likely to receive LDKT, more likely to receive DDKT, and had higher risk of waitlist mortality. Differential relationships between SDOH, access to LDKT, DDKT, and waitlist mortality suggest the need for targeted interventions aimed at decreasing waitlist mortality and increasing access to LDKT among patients with adverse SDOH.