will be to discover the personality characteristics which make some doctors particularly vulnerable to desynchronisation of circadian performance rhythm after disruption of sleep. Data from the Tucson epidemiological study of airways obstructive disease on smoking of non-tobacco cigarettes such as marijuana were analysed to determine the effect of such smoking on respiratory symptoms and pulmonary function. Among adults aged under 40, 14% had smoked non-tobacco cigarettes at some time and 90/o were current users. The prevalence of respiratory symptoms was increased in smokers of non-tobacco cigarettes. After tobacco smoking had been controiled for men who smoked non-tobacco cigarettes showed significant decreases in expiratory flow rates at low lung volumes and in the ratio of the forced expiratory volume in one second to the vital capacity. This effect on pulmonary function in male non-tobacco cigarette smokers was greater than the effect of tobacco cigarette smoking.These data suggest that non-tobacco cigarette smoking may be an important risk factor in young adults with respiratory symptoms or evidence of airways obstruction.

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Death certificate reporting of chronic airways disease was examined during 13 years of follow-up in the Tucson Epidemiologic Study of Airways Obstructive Disease. The Tucson study population is a geographically clustered stratified random sample of white, non-Mexican-American households in Tucson, Arizona. The initial survey was performed in 1972-1973. Using clinical and physiologic criteria from nine surveys to define airways obstructive disease in the population, the authors compared death certificate reporting with these criteria as the underlying cause and as reported anywhere on the death certificate. Reporting was related to the degree of antemortem airways obstruction. Sex differences in reporting were also noted. Females showed greater rates of reporting at low levels of impairment while males showed greater reporting at high levels of impairment. When airways obstructive disease was not the underlying cause of death, the type of underlying cause was found to affect reporting of airways obstructive disease on the death certificate.

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A sample population of healthy nonsmoking male (n = 416) and female (n = 608) subjects derived from all non-Hispanic white subjects 5 to 60 yr of age enrolled in the Tucson Epidemiological Study of Airway Obstructive Disease was studied to evaluate the temporal relationships between various pulmonary function measures and somatic growth. Pulmonary function measures derived from the maximal expiratory flow volume (MEFV) curve included FVC, FEV1, maximal expiratory flow after 50% of vital capacity had been expired (Vmax50), and maximal midexpiratory flow (FEF25-75). The lung function and somatic growth longitudinal data were characterized by a nonparametric polynomial smoothing spline model. This procedure yields an optimal fitted curve through the data, an estimate of the growth velocity curve, and 95% confidence bands. Temporal relationships between the fitted growth curves were determined examining the ages at which the growth velocity peaks (GVP) occur. In addition, the age of growth cessation was estimated using lower limits of the 95% confidence bands of each growth velocity curve. The results indicate that the point estimates of the somatic GVPs precede all peak lung function measurements derived from the MEFV curve in both males and females. The only statistically significant difference between when the GVPs for somatic growth and functional lung growth occurred was for FEV1 and FEF25-75 in males, though similar trends were apparent in all other variables, suggesting that the timing of maximal body growth velocity precedes that of maximal lung functional growth and that the early growth spurt in females includes the lungs.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)