Background-Hypospadias is a common male birth defect that has shown widespread variation in reported prevalence estimates. Many countries have reported increasing trends over recent decades. Objective-To analyze the prevalence and trends of hypospadias for 27 international programs over a 31-yr period. Yu et al.

BackgroundDue to the rising standard of living environment and advances in public health and medical care in China, it has been a tendency in recent years that health-related quality of life (HRQoL) has been increasingly acknowledged in community health management. However, large-scale population-based study on evaluating HQRoL in northeast of China was not conducted. This article aims to investigate the HRQoL in community residents in Northeast China and explore the associated factors.MethodsStratified multiple-stage sampling method was used in the cross-sectional survey to investigate HRQoL of community residents in northeast of China. Univariate analysis and multiple linear regressions were used to analyze the factors associated to HRQoL of the community residents. ResultsThe results were confirmed that HRQoL in general population was well performed for the first time in northeast of China in a large scale population. Community residents had better mental health than physical health. The factors influencing HRQoL included gender, age, educational level, marital status, ethnic group, chronic disease status, having breakfast frequency weekly and sleep quality. However, drinking and smoking habits did not affect residents’ HRQoL.ConclusionsIn this study, the result of the large-scale survey was satisfactory in northeast of China, providing HRQoL status of community residents. Policies on specific health management in community public health would emphasize on lifestyle behaviors especially eating habits in order to improving HRQoL.

Background Few studies have systematically evaluated birth defect co‐occurrence patterns, perhaps, in part, due to the lack of software designed to implement large‐scale, complex analytic methods. Methods We created an R‐based platform, “co‐occurring defect analysis” (CODA), designed to implement analyses of birth defect co‐occurrence patterns in birth defect registries. CODA uses an established algorithm for calculating the observed‐to‐expected ratio of a given birth defect combination, accounting for the known tendency of birth defects to co‐occur nonspecifically. To demonstrate CODA's feasibility, we evaluated the computational time needed to assess 2‐ to 5‐way combinations of major birth defects in the Texas Birth Defects Registry (TBDR) (1999–2014). We report on two examples of pairwise patterns, defects co‐occurring with trisomy 21 or with non‐syndromic spina bifida, to demonstrate proof‐of‐concept. Results We evaluated combinations of 175 major birth defects among 206,784 infants in the TBDR. CODA performed efficiently in the data set, analyzing 1.5 million 5‐way combinations in 18 hr. As anticipated, we identified large observed‐to‐expected ratios for the birth defects that co‐occur with trisomy 21 or spina bifida. Conclusions CODA is available for application to birth defect data sets and can be used to better understand co‐occurrence patterns. Co‐occurrence patterns elucidated by using CODA may be helpful for identifying new birth defect associations and may provide etiological insights regarding potentially shared pathogenic mechanisms. CODA may also have wider applications, such as assessing patterns of additional types of co‐occurrence patterns in other large data sets (e.g., medical records).