Kristian Tambs

Norwegian Institute of Public Health · Division for Mental Health

Purpose This article explored the predictive values of three main language delay (LD) trajectories (i.e., persistent, late onset, and transient) across 3–5 years on poor literacy at 8 years. Additionally, the effect of gender was assessed, using both gender-neutral and gender-specific thresholds. Method The data comprised mother-reported questionn...

Background Hearing loss is a global public health problem putting millions of people at risk of experiencing impediments in communication and potentially impaired mental health. Many studies in this field are based on small, cross sectional samples using self-report measures. The present study aims to investigate the association between childhood s...

Background With ageing, long-standing inflammation can be destructive, contributing to development of several disorders, among these Alzheimer’s disease (AD). C-reactive protein (CRP) is a relatively stable peripheral inflammatory marker, but in previous studies the association between highly sensitive CRP (hsCRP) and AD have shown inconsistent res...

BACKGROUND: Studies investigating gestational influenza and child neurodevelopment are still scarce, particularly concerning timing of infection in pregnancy. This is the first study to investigate associations between gestational influenza and infant psychomotor development and temperament at 6 months. METHODS: Data from The Norwegian Influenza Pr...

Objective: Both normative personality and DSM-IV personality disorders have been found to be heritable. However, there is limited knowledge about the extent to which the genetic and environmental influences underlying DSM personality disorders are shared with those of normative personality. The aims of this study were to assess the phenotypic simi...

Background Higher cognitive ability is associated with favourable health characteristics. The relation between ability and alcohol consumption, and their interplay with other health characteristics, is unclear. We aimed to assess the relationship between cognitive ability and alcohol consumption and to assess whether alcohol consumption relates dif...

heritage/home language (HL), parental input patterns, transmission, English/German-Norwegian bilingual families, HL status, parental gender effect

We examine a sample of Norwegian twin conscripts for evidence of an interaction between parental education and the heritability of general cognitive ability (GA). Ability scores were obtained on 1706 pairs of twins who were conscripted into the Norwegian Armed Forces between 1931and 1960. Education scores were available for mothers and fathers; the...

Background A lot of attention has been paid to the relationship of blood pressure and dementia because epidemiological research has reported conflicting evidence. Observational data has shown that midlife hypertension is a risk factor for cognitive decline and dementia later in life, whereas there is evidence that low blood pressure is predictive i...

Alcohol use disorder (AUD) and major depressive disorder (MDD) are often comorbid. It is not understood how genetic risk factors for these disorders relate to each other over time and to what degree they are stable. Age-dependent characteristics of the disorders indicate that different genetic factors could be relevant at different stages of life,...

Background: Sickness absence (SA) among pregnant women is high. The aim of this study was to examine whether factors known to predict SA in general also predict SA during pregnancy by estimating the association between prior mental distress and musculoskeletal pain and SA during pregnancy, and to assess the influence of familial (genetic and share...

Background Most people in industrialized societies grow up in core (parents only) families with few if any siblings. Based on an evolutionary perspective, it may be argued that this environment reflects a mismatch, in that the tribal setting offered a larger number of close affiliates. The present project examined whether this mismatch may have a n...

Background Mental disorders strongly influence work capability in young adults, but it is not clear which disorders that are most strongly associated with sick leave, and which diagnoses that are stated on the sick leave certificates. Better knowledge of the impairments associated with different mental disorders is needed for optimal planning of in...

Objectives: The objective of this study has been to test 2 spreadsheet models to compare the observed with the expected hearing loss for a Norwegian reference population. Material and methods: The prevalence rates of the Norwegian and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) definitions of hearing outcomes were calculate...

Objectives/Hypothesis To study the prevalence and usefulness of audiometric notches in the diagnosis of noise‐induced hearing loss (NIHL). Study Design Audiograms and data on noise exposure from 23,297 men and 26,477 women, aged 20 to 101 years, from the Nord‐Trøndelag Hearing Loss Study, 1996–1998. Methods The prevalence of four types of audiome...

Objective The aim of this study was to analyse longitudinal data to assess the risk of noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL) in Norwegian railway workers. Design Longitudinal. Setting A major Norwegian railway company. Methods We examined data from the first and last audiograms for the period 1991–2014, from 9640 railway workers with varying occupat...

https://www.fhi.no/publ/2016/laringsmiljo-skoleferdigheter-og-utviklingsvansker/ The report titled The School Study: Learning, academic skills and developmental problems is the sixth report from the Language and Learning Study (SOL) at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, commissioned by the Ministry of Education. Based on teachers' reports,...

During the last fifty years more than 2700 twin studies have been published, examining the etiology of a high number of traits. Twin studies enable investigation of both genetic and environmental effects, and thereby also examination of causal factors involved in human traits and disorders. The beauty of twin studies resides in the potential of stu...

em>Background and aims: Sickness absence (SA) and disability pension (DP) are increasingly recognized as major public problems. Musculoskeletal disorders are among the most common diagnoses set by physicians granting SA and DP. Results from recent twin studies have established that SA and DP are influenced not only by environmental and social facto...

In the late 1970s, a Norwegian twin panel was set up. It included all like-sexed twin pairs, born in the period 1915 to 1960, where both members were alive and had a known address in Norway at the time. The work was initiated through a grant from the National Institutes of Health in the United States. The aim was to estimate maternal effects to und...

The Norwegian Twin Registry (NTR) is a large population based twin cohort for research purposes. At present, the registry has 14 692 complete twin pairs with information on zygosity and to varying degree information on somatic and mental health, lifestyle and demographics. The registry covers birth years 1895-1960 and 1967- 1991. NTR was establishe...

Background: The purpose was to study hearing aid (HA) use in persons 65 years and older, and to investigate how socioeconomic and hearing related factors were associated to use of HA. Method: This study included 11,602 persons (65 years and above) from the second Nord-Trøndelag Health Study (HUNT2) and the integrated North-Trøndelag hearing loss...

The Coping With Strain (CWS) course is a modified version of the Coping With Depression (CWD) course. CWD has been shown to reduce depression in several target groups. However, no other study has tested a modified CWD course delivered at the workplace to promote mental health. As mental health problems among employees remain a neglected area in man...

The Coping With Strain (CWS) course is a modification of the Coping With Depression (CWD) course. CWD is by far the most studied psycho-educational intervention to reduce and prevent depression, but CWD has never been tested in a randomized controlled trial in the workplace. This study seeks to examine the extent to which CWS, on a short-term and a...

This is an update of the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study (MoBa) cohort profile which was published in 2006. Pregnant women attending a routine ultrasound examination were initially invited. The first child was born in October 1999 and the last in July 2009. The participation rate was 41%. The cohort includes more than 114 000 children, 95 0...

Objective: The aim was to test the hypothesis that the difference in body mass index (BMI) between twins and singletons may be attributed to a difference in birth weight. Methods: Data from the Medical Birth Registry of Norway were linked with data from the Norwegian Conscript Service. This study used data on 411,186 males who were born in singl...

Low socioeconomic status (SES), indicated by low income and education, has consistently been found to be a strong predictor of sick leave. Several possible pathways from SES to sick leave have been described in previous literature, but there are also evidence indicating that the association can be confounded by common underlying factors. This study...

Importance The association between childhood hearing disorders and adult tinnitus has not been examined in longitudinal cohort studies.Objectives To determine the association between different types of childhood hearing loss and tinnitus in adulthood and evaluate whether tinnitus risk is mediated by adult hearing loss.Design, Setting, and Partici...

Purpose: To examine the association between time of onset of hearing loss (childhood versus adulthood) and self-reported hearing handicap in adults. Methods: Population-based cohort study of 2,024 adults (mean 48 years) with hearing loss (binaural PTA 0.5-4 kHz ≥ 20 dB HL) who completed a hearing handicap questionnaire. In childhood, the same pe...

Objective: The purpose of the present paper was to examine the association between prospectively and cross-sectionally assessed cardiovascular risk factors and hearing loss. Design: Hearing was assessed by pure-tone average thresholds at low (0.25–0.5 kHz), middle (1–2 kHz), and high (3–8 kHz) frequencies. Self-reported or measured cardiovascular r...

Background: There is substantial comorbidity between personality disorders (PDs) and anxiety disorders (ADs). Sharing of familial risk factors possibly explains the co-occurrence, but direct causal relationships between the disorders may also exist. Methods: 2801 persons from 1391 twin pairs from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health Twin Pan...

The objective of the study was to examine the association between otitis media in childhood and dizziness in adulthood. Longitudinal, population-based cohort study of 21,962 adults (aged 20-59 years, mean 40) who completed a health questionnaire in the Nord-Trøndelag Hearing Loss Study was conducted. At 7, 10 and 13 years of age, the same individua...

Background. The phenotypic stability of avoidant personality disorder (AVPD) and obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD) has previously been found to be moderate. However, little is known about the longitudinal structure of genetic and environmental factors for these disorders separately and jointly, and to what extent genetic and environm...

To give a systematic review of the development of noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL) in working life. A literature search in MEDLINE, Embase, Web of Science, Scopus, and Health and Safety Abstracts, with appropriate keywords on noise in the workplace and health, revealed 22,413 articles which were screened by six researchers. A total of 698 articles...

Antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) and borderline personality disorder (BPD) share genetic and environmental risk factors. Little is known about the temporal stability of these etiological factors in adulthood. DSM-IV criteria for ASPD and BPD were assessed using structured interviews in 2282 Norwegian twins in early adulthood and again approxi...

The aim of the study was to examine childhood high-frequency sensorineural hearing loss (HF-SNHL) and the effects of combined exposure with aging or noise exposure on HF hearing thresholds in adulthood. Population-based cohort study of 30,003 adults (mean age 40 years) underwent an audiometry and completed a hearing questionnaire. At age 7-13 years...

The relationship between alcohol consumption and dementia risk is unclear. This investigation estimates the association between alcohol consumption reported in a population-based study in the mid-1980s and the risk for dementia up to 27 years later. The entire adult population in one Norwegian county was invited to the Nord-Trøndelag Health Study d...

Background Poor health and health behaviors are associated with divorce. This study investigates the degree to which six health indicators and health behaviors among husbands and wives are prospectively related to divorce, and whether spousal similarities in these factors are related to a reduced risk of marital dissolution. Theoretically, a reduce...

Background The association between mental distress and divorce is well established in the literature. Explanations are commonly classified within two different frameworks; social selection (mentally distressed people are selected out of marriage) and social causation (divorce causes mental distress). Despite a relatively large body of literature on...

It is not fully understood how subjective feelings of psychological distress prognosticate dementia. Our aim was to investigate the association between self-reported psychological distress and risk of dementia-related mortality. We included 31,043 eligible individuals between the ages of 60 and 80 years, at time of examination, from the CONOR (Coho...

The aim of this birth cohort study was to determine the relationship between birth weight and the risk of overweight in young adulthood. Methods: Data from the Medical Birth Registry of Norway were linked with register data from the National Conscript Service. This study used data on the 348,800 males who were born at term in single births in Norwa...

Rapporten er den femte i et samarbeidsprosjekt mellom Kunnskapsdepartementet og Folkehelseinstituttet og omhandler betydningen av barnehager basert på data fra Den norske mor og barnundersøkelsen (MoBa) der spørreskjema for nesten 7000 femåringer ble fylt ut av både foreldre og pedagogiske ledere i barnehagene. I de foregående rapportene har vi und...

Background: There is a lack of population-based studies on multiple births and maternal mental health. Having a high-risk pregnancy by bearing two or more children is a stressful life event, and the challenges of parenting two or more children probably also lead to a high level of parental stress. There are a few results on multiple births and mate...

The aim of this study was to establish the psychometric properties of the new Relationship Satisfaction (RS) scale. Two population based samples were used: The Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study (MoBa, N=117,178) and The Quality of Life study (N=347). Convergent and discriminant validity was investigated in relation to the Quality of Marriage...

Original psychometric instruments are usually too lengthy and space-consuming to be suitable for general population based health studies. Usually, however, they can be abbreviated without losing more measurement precision than what can be accepted in such studies. Here we demonstrate that short-form versions of three instruments which are part of t...

Noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL) is one of the most reported occupational diseases internationally. The occurrence of audiometric notches is emphasized in both American and European guidelines for the diagnosis of NIHL. The aim of this study was to describe the prevalence of notched audiograms among railway personnel with and without noise exposur...

In many Western countries, women now reach educational levels comparable to men, although their income remains considerably lower. For the past decades, it has become increasingly clear that these measures of socio-economic status are influenced by genetic as well as environmental factors. Less is known about the relationship between education and...

Background: While cluster A personality disorders (PDs) have been shown to be moderately heritable, we know little about the temporal stability of these genetic risk factors. Method: Paranoid PD (PPD) and schizotypal PD (STPD) were assessed using the Structured Interview for DSM-IV Personality in 2793 young adult twins from the Norwegian Institu...

To study the extent to which otitis media (OM) in childhood is associated with adult hearing thresholds. Furthermore, to study whether the effects of OM on adult hearing thresholds are moderated by age or noise exposure. Population-based cohort study of 32,786 participants who had their hearing tested by pure-tone audiometry in primary school and a...

Background Independently of cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors, cognitive ability may account for some of the excess risk of coronary heart disease (CHD) associated with lower education. We aimed to assess how late adolescence cognitive ability and midlife CVD risk factors are associated with the educational gradient in CHD in Norway. Method...

Objective Railway workers performing maintenance work of trains and tracks could be at risk of developing noise-induced hearing loss, since they are exposed to noise levels of 75–90 dB(A) with peak exposures of 130–140 dB(C). The objective was to make a risk assessment by comparing the hearing thresholds among train and track maintenance workers wi...

Background: Studies of caregiver burden and somatic illness tend to be based on relatively small, clinical samples. Longitudinal, population based studies on this topic are still scarce and little is known about the long-term impact of partner illness on spousal mental health in the general population. This study investigates whether spouses of par...

An inverse relationship between educational level and dementia has been reported in several studies. In this study we investigated the relationship between educational level and dementia related deaths for cohorts of people all born during 1915-39. The cohorts were followed up from adulthood or old age, taking into account possible confounders and...

Jessica Mira Gabin1, Amy R. Borenstein4, Jostein Holmen1, James A Mortimer4, Ingvild Saltvedt3, Kristian Tambs2, 1HUNT Research Center , Levanger, Norway, 2Norwegian Institute of Public Health , Oslo, Norway, 3NTNU , Trondheim, Norway, 4University of South Florida , Tampa, Florida, United States Background: In Norway, there has not yet been a syst...

This study investigates the degree to which internalizing disorders (anxiety and mood disorders) are prospectively associated with sick leave granted for mental and somatic disorders, and the extent to which common genetic and environmental risk factors influence these relationships. Data include self-reported symptoms of psychological distress fro...

Background Caring for a spouse diagnosed with dementia can be a stressful situation and can put the caregiving partner at risk of loss of mental health and wellbeing. The main aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between dementia and spousal mental health in a population-based sample of married couples older than 55 years of age. T...

Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in loci 1p13 and 9p21 have previously been found to be associated with incident coronary heart disease (CHD). This study aimed to investigate whether these SNPs show associations with fatal CHD in a population-based cohort study after adjustment for socioeconomic- and lifestyle-related CHD risk factors not com...

The aim of the Health and Memory Study (HMS) of Nord-Trøndelag, Norway, was primarily to establish a database suitable as basis for a large number of studies on dementia. Data from the HMS study were collected via questionnaires and examinations during the period from 1995 to 2011. The dementia panel consists of 620 participants residing in nursing...

Hvor mange har demens i Norge? Antall eldre over 65 år vil stige betraktelig, og det forventes en kraftig økning av demensrammede de nærmeste årene. Vi har ikke god oversikt over hvor mange som faktisk har demens i Norge eller hvor mange som vil bli rammet i fremtiden. Slik oversikt er nødvendig for å planlegge fremtidige helse- og omsorgstjeneste...

Personality disorders (PDs) reduce global functioning, are associated with high levels of work disability, and are thus also likely to influence long-term sick leave (LTSL). Previous research has indicated significant genetic influence on both DSM-IV PDs and LTSL. To what degree genes contributing to PDs also influence LTSL has not been investigate...

Background There is a general perception that train drivers and conductors may be at increased risk of developing noise-induced hearing loss.AimsTo study job-related hearing loss among train drivers and train conductors.Methods Audiograms from train drivers and train conductors were obtained from the medical records of the occupational health servi...

There is increased focus on early diagnosis of dementia, and subjective awareness of memory impairment is often assumed to be an early symptom of dementia. Subjective memory impairment (SMI) is used to describe subjective awareness of memory problems in the elderly after identifiable diseases which include this symptom are excluded. The aim of the...

Importance Previous studies have indicated that the psychopathological dimensions of borderline personality disorder (BPD) are influenced by a unitary liability factor. However, to our knowledge, the underlying etiological nature of the individual criteria for BPD as defined by the DSM-IV has not been explored.Objective To determine the structure...

Divorce is associated with mental health problems, and heavy drinking is related to higher risk of divorce. Less is known about the effects of divorce in couples where one or both drinks heavily. There are, however, reasons to expect different consequences of divorce in heavy risk using couples compared to other couples. Spouses of abusers may expe...

Aim: The purpose was to explore the possible associations between measured hearing thresholds and work related disability pension granted for other medical reasons in a Norwegian population. Method: This study included 25,537 persons from the Nord-Trøndelag Health Study (HUNT) aged 20-54 years at baseline in HUNT1 (1984-1986) who also participat...