Papers by Maria Antonia Barceló
En este trabajo se pretende contrastar la hipótesis de que la incidencia de las ausencias del tra... more En este trabajo se pretende contrastar la hipótesis de que la incidencia de las ausencias del trabajo depende de factores socioeconómicos relaciona- dos con la ocupación utilizando aquellos métodos estadísticos adecuados que permiten controlar el efecto de las recurrencias en las inferencias realizadas. Los datos de partida son las cohortes formadas por trabajado- res de las dos compañías constitutivas de
Medicine, Jul 1, 2016
Background: The relative efficacy of antihypertensive drugs/combinations is not well known. Ident... more Background: The relative efficacy of antihypertensive drugs/combinations is not well known. Identifying the most effective ones and the patients' characteristics associated with best performance of the drugs will improve management of hypertensive patients. Objective: To assess the blood pressure (BP) reduction attributed to antihypertensive drugs and identify characteristics associated with BP decrease. Data sources: MEDLINE, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials from inception through July 2012 and selected papers. Study eligibility criteria: Double-blind, randomized clinical trials whose main result was the reduction in BP by antihypertensive treatment, with study population ≥50 or ≥25 if the study was a crossover, follow-up of at least 8 weeks, and available required data. Study appraisal and synthesis methods: Study data were independently extracted by multiple observers and introduced in an electronic database. Inconsistencies were resolved by discussion and referral back to the original articles. Meta-analysis was performed according to PRISMA statement and using a Bayesian framework. Main Outcome(s) and Measure(s): Mean decrease in systolic (SBP) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) achieved by each drug or combination. Results: Two hundred eight trials including 94,305 patients were identified. In monotherapy, most drugs achieved 10 to 15 mm Hg SBP and 8 to 10 mm Hg DBP decreases. Olmesartan/amlodipine, olmesartan/hydrochlorothiazide, felodipine/metoprolol, and valsartan/hydrochlorothiazide were the combinations leading to the greatest mean SBP reductions (>20 mm Hg). Female sex and body mass index >25 kg/m 2 were associated with more pronounced SBP and DBP reductions, whereas Afro-American ethnicity was associated with BP reductions smaller than the median. Results were adjusted by study duration, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes mellitus. Still, the estimation was performed using the mean administered doses, which do not exactly match those of the available drug formats. Limitations: Data corresponded to those obtained in each of the included trials; the analysis of the combinations was limited to the most recent ones; estimations were performed using the mean administered doses.
Environmental health perspectives, Sep 24, 2018
European Respiratory Journal, Sep 1, 2014
Several studies have found an association between traffic noise and adverse health effects, both,... more Several studies have found an association between traffic noise and adverse health effects, both, morbidity and mortality. Some authors question these because of the high association between traffic noise and air pollution. However, recently several studies have shown an independent short-term association between noise and cardiovascular and respiratory mortality from the effect of air pollutants that are routinely measured. Our objective here is to provide evidence of an independent long-term association between traffic noise and mortality due to COPD. We used a case-control design with individual data. Ascases, we use deaths fromCOPD (for which we georeferencedtheir address)between 2004 and2007 inthe Barcelona Metropolitan Region (BMR), Spain. As controls, we used deaths byAIDSand external causes, matched by sex and age. We used the annual mean of daytime noise level for RGM and controlled for confounders: i) air pollutants (NO 2 , PM 10 and benzene); material deprivation (at a census tract level); and several land use variables. We explicitly controlled for spatial misalignment (i.e. the response and all the exposure measurements had different spatial locations); heterogeneity; and spatio-temporal dependency. Analyses were done separately for men and for women. We estimated a risk increase of COPD mortality of 6.01% (95CI 3.76%-8.17%) for an increased annual mean of daytime interquartile range 7.613 dB(A). This risk was not confounded by any variable. No effect was found for women and for subjects aged Our results suggest that the associations indicating the long-term effects of exposure to traffic noise are not spurious.
Environmental health perspectives, Sep 18, 2022
Environmental health perspectives, Sep 18, 2022
Our objective in this work was to present a hierarchical Bayesian spatiotemporal model that allow... more Our objective in this work was to present a hierarchical Bayesian spatiotemporal model that allowed us to make spatial predictions of air pollution levels in an effective way and with very few computational costs.We specified a hierarchical spatiotemporal model, using the Stochastic Partial Differential Equations of the integrated nested Laplace approximations approximation. This approach allowed us to spatially predict, in the territory of Catalonia (Spain), the levels of the four pollutants for which there is the most evidence of an adverse health effect.Our model allowed us to make fairly accurate spatial predictions of both long- term and short-term exposure to air pollutants, with a low computational cost. The only requirements of the method we propose are the minimum number of stations distributed throughout the territory where the predictions are to be made, and that the spatial and temporal dimensions are either independent or separable.HighlightsWe show a hierarchical Bayes...
DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals), Dec 1, 2008
The conversation, 2020
Rigor académico, oficio periodístico Dos cartas publicadas en The Lancet y The Lancet Public Heal... more Rigor académico, oficio periodístico Dos cartas publicadas en The Lancet y The Lancet Public Health en los últimos meses defienden la necesidad de evaluar de forma independiente la respuesta española ante la covid-19. Estamos de acuerdo, pero nos gustaría complementarlas con tres puntos que nos acercan a la ciencia abierta. Nos referimos a la confusión terminológica, la calidad de los datos y su disponibilidad. Según las cartas, una de las razones por las que España se ha visto más afectada por la pandemia es la poca confianza que hay en el asesoramiento científico. Creemos que gran parte de esta desconfianza está ocasionada por una importante confusión terminológica. Esta se produce en prácticamente todos los medios de comunicación (con notables excepciones), y conduce a una malinterpretación de los datos y, como consecuencia, a una pérdida de confianza en los sistemas de información sanitaria, en la investigación y la epidemiología. ¿Casos nuevos o positivos? ¿Sospechosos o confirmados? La Shutterstock / Cryptographer Covid-19: la malinterpretación de los datos de la pandemia daña la confianza del público
Environmental Sciences Europe, 2021
Background While numerous studies have assessed the effects of environmental (meteorological vari... more Background While numerous studies have assessed the effects of environmental (meteorological variables and air pollutants) and socioeconomic variables on the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, many of them, however, have significant methodological limitations and errors that could call their results into question. Our main objective in this paper is to assess the methodological limitations in studies that evaluated the effects of environmental and socioeconomic variables on the spread of COVID-19. Main body We carried out a systematic review by conducting searches in the online databases PubMed, Web of Science and Scopus up to December 31, 2020. We first excluded those studies that did not deal with SAR-CoV-2 or COVID-19, preprints, comments, opinion or purely narrative papers, reviews and systematic literature reviews. Among the eligible full-text articles, we then excluded articles that were purely descriptive and those that did not include any type of regression model. We evaluated...
Science of The Total Environment, 2020
Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on ... more Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre-including this research content-immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active. Short Communication Effectiveness of the measures to flatten the epidemic curve of COVID-19. The case of Spain
Obesity Reviews, 2021
A systematic search of the literature was performed to compare the effects of interventions that ... more A systematic search of the literature was performed to compare the effects of interventions that targeted sedentary behaviours or physical activity (PA) or physical fitness on primary prevention of obesity in 6-to 12-year-old children. The search identified 146 reports that provided relevant data for meta-analysis. Point estimates in % body fat were higher for fitness interventions compared with PA interventions (standardized mean difference = −0.11%; 95% CI = −0.26 to 0.04, and −0.04%; 95% CI = −0.15 to 0.06, respectively). Including sedentary behaviour to a PA-or fitness-oriented intervention was not accompanied by an increase in intervention effectiveness, as the point estimates were slightly smaller compared with those for PA-or fitness-only interventions. Overall, the effects tended to be larger in girls than in boys, especially for PA + sedentary behaviour interventions. There was some evidence for inequality, as the effects on body mass index were seen when interventions were delivered in the general population (standardized mean difference = −0.05, 95% CI = −0.07 to −0.02), but not in groups of disadvantaged children (standardized mean difference = −0.01, 95% CI = −0.29 to 0.19). In conclusion, school-based PA interventions appear to be an effective strategy in the primary prevention of childhood obesity among 6-to 12-year-old children, but targeting sedentary behaviour in addition to PA or fitness does not increase the effectiveness of the intervention.
Neuroepidemiology, 2018
It is believed that an interaction between genetic and non-genetic factors may be involved in the... more It is believed that an interaction between genetic and non-genetic factors may be involved in the development of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). With the exception of exposure to agricultural chemicals like pesticides, evidence of an association between environmental risk factors and ALS is inconsistent. Our objective here was to investigate the association between long-term exposure to environmental factors and the occurrence of ALS in Catalonia, Spain, and to provide evidence that spatial clusters of ALS related to these environmental factors exist. We carried out a nested case-control study constructed from a retrospective population-based cohort, covering the entire region. Environmental variables were the explanatory variables of interest. We controlled for both observed and unobserved confounders. We have found some spatial clusters of ALS. The results from the multivariate model suggest that these clusters could be related to some of the environmental variables, in parti...
The international journal of neuropsychopharmacology, Jul 13, 2017
We investigated the effect of cholinesterase inhibitors on all-cause discontinuation, efficacy an... more We investigated the effect of cholinesterase inhibitors on all-cause discontinuation, efficacy and safety, and the effects of study design-, intervention-, and patient-related covariates on the risk-benefit of cholinesterase inhibitors for Alzheimer's disease. A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized placebo-controlled clinical trials comparing cholinesterase inhibitors and placebo was performed. The effect of covariates on study outcomes was analysed by means of meta-regression using a Bayesian framework. Forty-three randomized placebo-controlled clinical trials involving 16106 patients were included. All-cause discontinuation was higher with cholinesterase inhibitors (OR = 1.66), as was discontinuation due to adverse events (OR=1.75). Cholinesterase inhibitors improved cognitive function (standardized mean difference = 0.38), global symptomatology (standardized mean difference=0.28) and functional capacity (standardized mean difference=0.16) but not neuropsychiatric...
Environmental research, Jan 15, 2016
Numerous studies showing statistically significant associations between environmental noise and a... more Numerous studies showing statistically significant associations between environmental noise and adverse health effects already exist for short-term (over one day at most) and long-term (over a year or more) noise exposure, both for morbidity and (albeit to a lesser extent) mortality. Recently, several studies have shown this association to be independent from confounders, mainly those of air pollutants. However, what has not been addressed is the problem of misalignment (i.e. the exposure data locations and health outcomes have different spatial locations). Without any explicit control of such misalignment inference is seriously compromised. Our objective is to assess the long-term effects of traffic noise on mortality in the city of Barcelona (Spain) during 2004-2007. We take into account the control of confounding, for both air pollution and socioeconomic factors at a contextual level and, in particular, we explicitly address the problem of misalignment. We employed a case-control...
Revista panamericana de salud pública = Pan American journal of public health, 2013
To determine if introducing age as another explanatory variable in an ecological regression model... more To determine if introducing age as another explanatory variable in an ecological regression model relating crude rates of cancer incidence and a deprivation index provides better results than the usual practice of using the standard incidence ratio (SIR) as the response variable, introducing the non-standardized index, and not including age in the model. Relative risks associated with the deprivation index for some locations of cancer in Spain's Girona Health Region were estimated using two different models. Model 1 estimated relative risks with the indirect method, using the SIR as the response variable. Model 2 estimated relative risks using age as an explanatory variable and crude cancer rates as the response variable. Two scenarios and two sub-scenarios were simulated to test the properties of the estimators and the goodness of fit of the two models. The results obtained from Model 2's estimates were slightly better (less biased) than those from Model 1. The results of t...
Revista Española de Salud Pública, 1999
Revista Española de Salud Pública, 1999
Environmental health perspectives, Aug 17, 2016
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Papers by Maria Antonia Barceló