Michael S Hendryx

Indiana University Bloomington | IUB · Department of Environmental Health

Aim: Objective measurements of physcial function, including gait speed, handgrip strength, and the chair stand test, have been shown to have predictive capacity for negative health-related outcomes. The aim of this study was to examine campariatively which of these common assessments may be optimal in terms of their predictive capacity for mortali...

Background: Evidence suggests that birth weight may be associated with colorectal cancer (CRC) risk later in life. Whether the association is mediated by adult body size remains unexamined. Method: Cox proportional hazards models (Hazard Ratio (HR) and 95 % Confidence Intervals (CI)) were used to evaluate the association between self-reported bi...

Objective: To assess the associations among several anthropometric measures, as well as BMI trajectories and CRC risk in older women. Design: Prospective cohort study. Setting: Forty clinical centres in the USA. Participants: 79,034 postmenopausal women in the Women's Health Initiative Observational Study. Results: During an average of 15....

We sought to assess the relationship between sleep duration, sleep disturbance and leukemia incidence among postmenopausal women. This study included 130343 postmenopausal women 50-79 years, who were enrolled in the Women's Health Initiative during 1993-1998. Variables of self-reported, typical sleep duration and sleep disturbance were obtained at...

Background: Sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 (SGLT2) inhibitors are a relatively new class of antidiabetic drugs with demonstrated renal and cardiovascular disease benefit. This study evaluates the role of SGLT2 inhibitors on the survival of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients. Methods: We used National Surveillance, Epidemiology and End R...

Introduction Sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 (SGLT2) inhibitors are a relatively new class of antidiabetic drugs. Emerging findings from laboratory studies indicate that SGLT2 inhibitors can improve liver function and suppress the proliferation of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) cells. The aim of this study was to test the hypothesis that initiation...

Objective Higher selenium intake and supplements have been suggested to protect against several cancers. Epidemiological evidence is rare and inconsistent on the association of selenium level and the risk of thyroid cancer. This study aimed to examine the association between selenium intake and thyroid cancer risk in postmenopausal women using the...

Background Cognitive impairment imposes substantial psychological, emotional, and economic burdens on affected individuals, families and society. A better understanding of potentially modifiable risk factors that may be used in the prevention of cognitive impairment is therefore a high priority in aging research. Methods This study included 9268 c...

Purpose Aging associated with progressive declines in physical function is well-known; however, it is unclear how breast cancer diagnosis affects the trajectories of physical function over a long period of time. The current study examined the trajectories in objective measures of physical function over 20 years for women with breast cancer and matc...

Purpose Cancer-related cognitive impairment is common during cancer treatment; however, it is unclear whether the impairment persists over time. Our study aimed to examine long-term cognitive impairment among older breast cancer survivors. Methods Participants included 2420 community-dwelling women aged 65 years or older at enrollment (1986–1988)...

Background Race disparities in health outcomes including mortality risk are well known, but mediating mechanisms that link race to mortality risk have rarely been formally tested. Methods We analyzed public NHANES III data from 1988-1994 linked to mortality outcomes prospectively through 2015. Participants included 10,460 non-Hispanic Black (40.5%...

Social isolation associated with greater risk for mortality is well documented, however, it is unclear whether and the extent to which social isolation influences mortality through health behaviors. We therefore assessed the mediation between social isolation and mortality by health behaviors. 15,000 adults ages 18–89 years in the Third National He...

Background Parabens are a group of endocrine disruptors that have been associated with health effects such as hypertension, diabetes, oxidative stress and obesity, which are associated with increased mortality risk over time. Women are exposed to higher paraben levels than men through use of consumer products. The current prospective study examines...

PURPOSE: Aging associated with progressive declines in physical function is well-known; however, little is known about the trajectories of physical function before and after breast cancer diagnosis. The current study examined the trajectories in objective measures of physical function over 20 years for women with breast cancer and matched controls....

Background Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is disproportionately higher in Black women relative to White women. The objective of this study was to examine to what extent the association between race/ethnicity and risk of TNBC is mediated by potentially modifiable factors.MethodsA total of 128,623 Black and White women aged 50–79 years from the...

Introduction Although risk factors often co-occur, previous studies examining lifestyle or psychosocial factors often treat these factors as individual predictors of health. This study aims to identify the underlying subgroups of women characterized by distinct lifestyle and psychosocial risk patterns and to investigate the prospective associations...

Purpose Because rural residents, particularly those near mining sites, are susceptible to numerous environmental health hazards, it is important to gain deeper insights into their use and trust of health information, which they may employ to help recognize symptoms, learn ways to reduce exposure, or find health care. Methods We surveyed residents...

Food environments are associated with diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular health, but associations to colorectal cancer incidence and mortality have not been reported. We analyzed associations between Food Environment Index (FEI) and national adjusted colorectal cancer incidence and mortality rates. Better FEI scores (i.e., environments with less...

Background There are no epidemiologic data on the relation of depression before colorectal cancer diagnosis to colorectal cancer mortality among women with colorectal cancer, especially those who are postmenopausal. Our aim was to fill this research gap. Methods We analyzed data from a large prospective cohort in the US, the Women’s Health Initiat...

Background: Female hormones may play roles during renal cell carcinoma (RCC) carcinogenesis. The aims of this study were to investigate associations between hysterectomy, oophorectomy and risk of RCC, and to assess whether the associations were modified by exogenous estrogen, commonly used among women who have undergone hysterectomy. Methods: Po...

Air pollution may contribute to depression risk, but prospective incidence studies of risks and resiliencies for young women have not been undertaken. We analyzed prospective cohort data from the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women's Health combined with air pollution exposure data from the National Pollutant Inventory. We followed 7804 women wi...

Background and Aims Little is known about how weight trajectories among women during menopausal transition and beyond may be related to risk of Type 2 diabetes (T2DM). The aim of this study was to examine associations between body mass index (BMI) trajectories over 20 years, age of obesity onset, cumulative obese-years and incidence of T2DM among m...

In the United States, coal consumption in the last 12 years has declined from 1,045,140 million short tons in 2007 to 539,420 million short tons in 2019, a decrease of almost 50%. During that period the number of electric power coal generators has declined from 1,470 to 738 accounting for 21% of capacity. An even more dramatic decrease in coal use...

Several studies have assessed the relationship between sleep duration and ovarian cancer risk, but the results are conflicting. Importantly, no studies addressed the relationship between sleep disturbance or sleep quality and ovarian cancer incidence. Moreover, few studies have examined the relationships between sleep measures and subtypes of ovari...

PurposeIt has been hypothesized that selenium (Se) can prevent cancer, and that Se deficiency may be associated with an increased risk of breast cancer. However, findings from epidemiological studies have been inconsistent. The objective of this study was to assess the association between Se intake and risk of breast cancer in the Women’s Health In...

Purpose Personality traits have been reported to be associated with type 2 diabetes (T2DM) risk. The objective of this study was to examine whether and to what extent the associations between personality traits (dispositional optimism, hostility and negative emotional expressiveness (NEE)) and risk of T2DM were mediated by health behaviors and obes...

Background Exposure to heavy metals may increase risk of kidney disease, but most studies have examined individual metals or two-way interactions. There is increasing recognition of the importance of studying exposure to metal mixtures and health outcomes. Objectives We used Bayesian kernel machine regression (BKMR) to examine associations between...

Objective: We studied associations between social support, social network size, social strain, or stressful life events and risk of coronary heart disease (CHD) in postmenopausal women with type 2 diabetes. Research design and methods: From the Women's Health Initiative, 5,262 postmenopausal women with type 2 diabetes at baseline were included....

The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is primarily respiratory in nature, and as such, there is interest in examining whether air pollution might contribute to disease susceptibility or outcome. We merged data on COVID-19 cumulative prevalence and fatality rates as of May 31, 2020 with 2014–2019 pollution data from the US Environmental Protectio...

We conducted latent class analyses to identify women with homogeneous combinations of lifestyle and behavioral variables and tested whether latent classes were prospectively associated with diabetes incidence for women with or without baseline obesity. A total of 64,710 postmenopausal women aged 50–79 years without prevalent diabetes at baseline (y...

IntroductionEvidence on the association between diabetes and risk of bladder cancer has been controversial. In addition, findings on the associations between duration of diabetes, diabetes treatment, and risk of bladder cancer have been inconsistent.MethodsA total of 148,208 participants in Women’s Health Initiative study were included. Information...

Physical activity is associated with decreased risk for many cancers. Studies on the association between physical activity and risk of bladder cancer are limited, and findings are inconsistent. Postmenopausal women (mean age= 63.3) were recruited into the Women's Health Initiative from 1993 to 1998. Self‐reported baseline information on physical ac...

Increasing reliance on natural gas for energy has resulted in expansion of the natural gas infrastructure, including pipelines and compressor stations to transport gas. Compressor stations emit numerous particulate and gaseous pollutants including volatile organic compounds (VOCs) but studies of human health in association with compressor stations...

This article reviews evidence for the public health impacts of coal across the extraction, processing, use, and waste disposal continuum. Surface coal mining and processing impose public health risks on residential communities through air and water pollution. Burning coal in power plants emits more nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, particulate matte...

Aims/hypothesis Obesity is a risk factor for type 2 diabetes, yet little is known about how timing and cumulative exposure of obesity are related to disease risk. The aim of this study was to examine the associations between BMI trajectories, age of onset of obesity and obese-years (a product of degree and duration of obesity) over early adulthood...

Occupational exposure limits for respirable coal dust are based on exposure during working hours, but coal miners may experience additional community-based exposures during nonworking hours. We analyzed Australia National Pollutant Inventory (NPI) data for the years 2008–2018 to estimate air pollutants (metals, nitrogen oxides, particulate matter ≤...

Objectives: To identify patterns of health, socioeconomic, behavioral, and psychosocial indicators that may be associated with low birth weight delivery or preterm birth. Study design: Data were analyzed from the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women's Health. A total of 9075 live singleton births among 3801 women were linked to state perinatal...

Exposure to flame retardants (FRs) is associated with adverse effects on human health. Focusing on three FR groups, including polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), organophosphate FRs (OPFRs), and novel brominated FRs (nBFRs), we determined the levels of these chemicals in indoor air in homes in rural Central Appalachia using passive air samplers...

Objective: Prospective studies on obesity incidence specifically among young adults have not been reported. This study examined risks of obesity incidence over 19 years among young women without obesity at baseline. Methods: Women aged 18 to 23 years at baseline (N = 8,177) were followed up every 2 to 3 years to ages 37 to 42 using the Australia...

Breast cancer has been suggested to potentially have prenatal origins. We examined associations between birth weight, body mass index (BMI) at four time points over 25‐years of adulthood, and risk of postmenopausal breast cancer, with emphasis on whether the association between birth weight and risk of breast cancer was mediated by weight and heigh...

Coal mining activities may increase residential exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), but personal PAH exposures have not been studied in mining areas. We used silicone wristbands as passive personal samplers to estimate PAH exposures in coal mining communities in Central Appalachia in the United States. Adults (N = 101) wore wristba...

Heavy metal exposures may contribute to diabetes risk but prospective studies are uncommon. We analyzed the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health (three cohorts aged 18–23, 45–50, or 70–75 at baseline in 1996, N = 34,191) merged with emissions data for 10 heavy metals (As, Be, Co, Cr, Cu, Hg, Mn, Ni, Pb, Zn) from the National Pollutant In...

Background: Exposure to environmental air pollutants exacerbates respiratory illness, but prospective studies of disease incidence are uncommon. Further, attempts to estimate effects from multiple point sources have rarely been undertaken. The current study examined risk of incident chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and asthma in associ...

Silicone wristbands are being increasingly used to assess human exposure to semi-volatile organic compounds (SVOCs). However, it is unclear what exposure pathways wristbands integrate. To test the hypothesis that wristbands integrate inhalation and dermal exposures, we measured 38 chemicals from four compound groups (PAHs, PBDEs, nBFRs, and OPEs) i...

Background Epidemiologic studies regarding weight loss and subsequent cancer risk are sparse. The study aim was to evaluate the association between weight change by intentionality and obesity-related cancer incidence in the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) Observational Study. Eleven cancers were considered obesity related: breast, ovary, endometriu...

Objective: To examine associations among parity, breastfeeding history, and risk of developing type 2 diabetes among postmenopausal women. Methods: A prospective cohort study was conducted. One hundred thirty-six thousand six hundred fifty-two postmenopausal women aged 50-79 years participating in the Women's Health Initiative recruited from 40...

Objective: We studied the associations between personality traits and the risk of coronary heart disease (CHD) or stroke in women with diabetes. Methods: From the Women's Health Initiative, 15,029 women aged 50 to 79 years at enrollment and with self-reported treated diabetes at baseline or follow-up, were followed for a mean of 10 years. Person...

Smoking is the strongest established risk factor for bladder cancer. Former smokers have a lower risk of bladder cancer compared with current smokers, but findings on the dose-response relationship between years after quitting and the risk of bladder cancer are inconsistent. A total of 143,279 postmenopausal women from the Women's Health Initiative...

Objectives: We examined whether social relationship variables (social support, social strain, social network size, and stressful life events) were associated with risk of developing type 2 diabetes among postmenopausal women. Method: 139,924 postmenopausal women aged 50-79 years without prevalent diabetes at baseline were followed for a mean of...

Purpose Rural areas may face under‐recognized threats to air quality. We tested 2 hypotheses that 1) rural areas in New South Wales, Australia, would have better air quality than metropolitan Sydney, and that 2) the rural Upper Hunter region characterized by coal mining and coal combustion would have worse air quality than other rural areas of the...

Objective: We examined whether personality traits, including optimism, ambivalence over emotional expressiveness, negative emotional expressiveness, and hostility, were associated with risk of developing type 2 diabetes (hereafter diabetes) among postmenopausal women. Methods: A total of 139,924 postmenopausal women without diabetes at baseline...

Background: Mountaintop removal mining has been associated with multiple types of disease outcomes for populations living nearby. The current study tested whether latent classes identifying people with symptoms from multiple organ systems were associated with residence in mountaintop mining communities. Methods: We used data from three cross-sectio...

For the first time, we present an analytical method to simultaneously extract, fractionate, and quantify four groups of semi-volatile organic compounds (SVOCs) in silicone wristbands, including 35 polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), 10 novel flame retardants (NFRs), 19 organophosphate esters (OPEs), and 13 polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs...

Objective To assess the extent of error present in self-reported weight data in the Women’s Health Initiative, variables that may be associated with error, and to develop methods to reduce any identified error. Design Prospective cohort study. Setting Forty clinical centres in the USA. Participants Women ( n 75 336) participating in the Women’s...

Objective: The study objective was to examine the impact of race/ethnicity on associations between anthropometric measures and diabetes risk. Research design and methods: A total of 136,112 postmenopausal women aged 50-79 years participating in the Women's Health Initiative without baseline cancer or diabetes were followed for 14.6 years. BMI, w...

Background: People experience multiple co-occurring exposures to environmental pollutants, but analyses of multiple exposures have rarely been reported. Objectives: We used latent class analysis to estimate co-exposures to multiple polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), and tested the associations of latent classes to body mass index. Methods:...

Background: We tested whether Medicaid expansion under the Affordable care Act was associated with increased screening for cervical, breast, and colorectal cancer among low-income adults. Methods: We analyzed Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System data, identifying 2012 as preexpansion and 2016 as postexpansion (2014 was treated as a wash-ou...

Objective: Weight gain frequently occurs after smoking cessation. The objective of this study was to examine whether weight gain after smoking cessation was attenuated by physical activity (PA) in postmenopausal women. Methods: A total of 4,717 baseline smokers from the Women's Health Initiative were followed for 3 years. One thousand two hundre...

Children are vulnerable to environmental chemical exposures, but little is known about the extent of multiple chemical exposures among children. We analyzed biomonitoring data from five cycles (2003–2012) of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) to describe multiple chemical exposures in US children, examine levels of chemic...

Mountaintop removal is a form of surface coal mining practiced in Central Appalachia. People who live near these mining sites express concerns about water and air quality problems caused by mining with corresponding impacts on health, but until relatively recently empirical evidence was lacking. This paper will describe the progression of a researc...

Objective To test a positive deviance method to identify counties that are performing better than statistical expectations on a set of population health indicators. Design Quantitative, cross-sectional county-level secondary analysis of risk variables and outcomes in Indiana. Data are analysed using multiple linear regression to identify counties...

Background: Children are exposed to multiple potentially harmful chemicals simultaneously. Efforts to understand the patterns and consequences of these exposures have been hampered by statistical limitations in estimations of higher order interactions. Objectives: The current study uses latent class analysis, a form of person-centered modeling t...

Iodine and iron are essential elements for healthy thyroid function. However, little is known about the association of iron and iodine with thyroid function in the general US population. We investigated iron and iodine status in relation to concentrations of thyroid hormones. We included 7672 participants aged 20 and older from three surveys (2007–...

Background: It has been suggested that breast and thyroid diseases may be linked. The aim of this study was to investigate the association between benign breast disease and subsequent risk of thyroid cancer. Methods: Postmenopausal women (n = 133,875) aged 50-79 years were followed up for a mean of 14 years. Benign breast disease was defined by...

Background: Few previous studies investigating depression before the diagnosis of breast cancer and breast cancer-specific mortality have examined depression measured at more than 1 time point. This study investigated the effect of depression (combining depressive symptoms alone with antidepressant use) measured at 2 time points before the diagnos...

The aim of this study was to determine the associations between hysterectomy, bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy (BSO), and incidence of diabetes in postmenopausal women participating in the Women's Health Initiative (WHI), a series of trials conducted in the United States, during the period 1993-1998. A total of 67,130 postmenopausal women aged 50-79...

Purpose Although obesity is an established endometrial cancer risk factor, information about the influence of weight loss on endometrial cancer risk in postmenopausal women is limited. Therefore, we evaluated associations among weight change by intentionality with endometrial cancer in the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) observational study. Patie...

Background: The prevalence of metabolically unhealthy phenotype in normal-weight adults is 30%, and few studies have explored the association between metabolic phenotype and colorectal cancer incidence in normal-weight individuals. Our aim was to compare the risk of colorectal cancer in normal-weight postmenopausal women who were characterized by...

Purpose: To analyze the differential rural-urban impacts of the Affordable Care Act Medicaid expansion on low-income childless adults' health insurance coverage. Methods: Using data from the American Community Survey years 2011-2015, we conducted a difference-in-differences regression analysis to test for changes in the probability of low-income...

Context: Estrogen has been suggested as a risk factor for thyroid cancer. Objective: The aim of this study is to examine the associations between hysterectomy, bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy (BSO) and incidence of thyroid cancer. Design: Prospective cohort study. Setting: 40 clinical centers in the United States. Participants: 127,566 wom...

We conducted an in-person survey in neighborhoods in south Chicago to examine whether residence near outdoor petroleum coke storage piles was associated with poorer health status and illness symptoms. A total of 223 adults (≥18) completed the surveys in English or Spanish, including 136 from a neighborhood exposed to the petroleum coke and 87 from...

Background: The aims of this study are to investigate the impact of pre-existing diabetes and diabetes treatments on lung cancer prognosis. Methods: A total of 2484 women with confirmed incident lung cancer from the Women's Health Initiative were followed for an average of 2.9 years through the date of death or 29 August 2014. Results: Compare...

Inhaled zinc has been found in association with cardiopulmonary toxicity. However, limited human epidemiologic studies are available. This study analyzed the association between covariate-adjusted cardiovascular (CVD) mortality rates and zinc compound air releases in the United States. We conducted an ecological analysis on the association between...

Objectives To prospectively assess the effects of newly developed chronic conditions on changes in health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in postmenopausal women. DesignProspective cohort study. SettingForty clinical centers in the United States. ParticipantsWomen aged 50 to 79 enrolled in the Women's Health Initiative Observational Study during 19...

The current paper reviews published evidence on the public health impacts of surface coal mining. Particular attention is paid to recent evidence for a form of surface mining practiced in the United States, namely mountaintop removal mining. Studies from other parts of the world are also briefly described. Evidence is presented that documents epide...