Ruth M HadfieldMacquarie University · Australian Institute of Health Innovation
Ruth M Hadfield
PhD
About
49
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Introduction
I am a freelance medical writer based in Sydney, Australia. Read more at www.mediwrite.com.au or follow me on Twitter @DrRuthHadfield
Additional affiliations
January 2007 - December 2011
Publications
Publications (49)
Background
Asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) cause a considerable burden of morbidity and mortality in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs). Access to safe, effective, quality-assured, and affordable essential medicines is variable. We aimed to review the existing literature relating to the availability, cost, and af...
SETTING
Household air pollution (HAP) and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are both major public health problems, reported to cause around 4 million and 3 million deaths every year, respectively. The great majority of these deaths, as well as the burden of disease during life is felt by people in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs)...
Background
Inhaled medications are central to treatment of asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), yet critical inhaler technique errors are made by up to 90% of patients. In the clinical research setting, recruitment of subjects with poor inhaler technique may give a false impression of both the benefits and the necessity of add-o...
Introduction
PubMed is a primary global open-access literature research database. Articles on PubMed are indexed manually with medical subject headings (MeSH ® ) to facilitate more complete literature searches. We aimed to determine the length of delay from publication to MeSH ® indexing for key respiratory journals and to investigate whether delay...
Investigate the relationship between gestational age and weight for gestational age and sleep apnea diagnosis in a cohort of children aged up to 6 years old.
A cohort study, using record linked population health data.
New South Wales, Australia.
398,961 children, born between 2000 and 2004, aged 2.5 to 6 years.
The primary outcome was sleep apnea d...
To determine trends in the incidence of meconium aspiration syndrome (MAS), and maternal factors and obstetric practices associated with any decline.
Population-based cohort study.
New South Wales (NSW), Australia.
All 877 037 liveborn, singleton, term infants (≥ 37 weeks of gestation) in the period 1997-2007.
Data were obtained from birth records...
Angiogenic factors are involved in formation of new blood vessels required for placental development and function; and critical for fetal growth and development. Soluble fms-like tyrosine kinase 1(sFlt-1) is an anti-angiogenic protein that inhibits formation of new blood vessels resulting in potential pregnancy complications. The objective of this...
Administrative or population health datasets (PHDS) are increasingly being used for research related to maternal and infant health. However, the accuracy and completeness of the information in the PHDS is important to ensure validity of the results of this research.
To compile and review studies that validate the reporting of conditions and procedu...
Research into the effects of common activities during pregnancy is sparse and often contradictory. To examine whether common activities are an acute trigger of pregnancy complications the prevalence of these activities are necessary to determine sample size estimates. The aim of this study is to ascertain the prevalence of selected activities in an...
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An association between endometriosis and reduced risk of pre-eclampsia has recently been reported. Longitudinally-linked electronic hospital records are a valuable resource for investigating such findings in a large, population-based sample. Our aim was to determine whether women with a history of endometriosis were at modified risk for pregnancy h...
To assess the change in birth rates, both overall and in age, parity, socioeconomic and geographical subgroups of the population, after the introduction of the Baby Bonus payment in Australia on 1 July 2004.
Population-based study using New South Wales birth records and Australian Bureau of Statistics population estimates for the period 1 January 1...
To determine whether the proportion of babies born large for gestational age (LGA) in New South Wales has increased, and to identify possible reasons for any increase.
Population-based study using data obtained from the NSW Midwives Data Collection, a legislated surveillance system of all births in NSW.
All 1 273 924 live-born singletons delivered...
Routinely collected datasets are frequently used for population-based research but their accuracy needs to be assured.
This study aims to assess the accuracy of hospital discharge data in identifying obstetric haemorrhage diagnoses and procedures, and estimate their population incidence.
The medical records of 1200 randomly selected women were revi...
To investigate whether changes in maternal and birth characteristics explain the increase in the use of epidural analgesia during labor.
Using data from a statewide surveillance system of all births, the study included 857,667 women who labored at term between 1992 and 2003 in New South Wales, Australia. Annual rates of epidural analgesia use were...
To determine the percentage of liveborn infants with selected antenatally identifiable and correctable birth defects who were delivered at hospitals with co-located paediatric surgical units (co-located hospitals). Additionally, to determine the survival rates for these infants.
Data were from linked New South Wales hospital discharge records from...
Population health datasets are a valuable resource for studying maternal and obstetric health outcomes. However, their validity has not been thoroughly examined. We compared medical records from a random selection of New South Wales (NSW) women who gave birth in a NSW hospital in 2002 with coded hospital discharge records. We estimated the populati...
To assess the accuracy of hypertensive disorders of pregnancy reporting in birth and hospital discharge data compared with data abstracted from medical records.
Data from a validation study of 1200 women provided the 'gold standard' for hypertension status. The validation data were linked to both hospital discharge and birth databases. Hypertension...
Endometriosis occurs in several non-human primate species that have menstrual cycles. This study investigated the prevalence and familial aggregation of endometriosis in one of those species, the rhesus macaque.
Between 1978 and 2001, 142 animals with endometriosis were identified from necropsy and surgical records and through the use of magnetic r...
The aim of the International Endogene Study is to discover genes that influence susceptibility to endometriosis.
The study brings together two research groups based in Australia and the United Kingdom that independently have been collecting families for linkage analysis and candidate gene studies. Both groups used similar methods to recruit familie...
An association between endometriosis and the glutathione S-transferase (GST) M1 null mutation has been reported in French and Slavic populations. We aimed to replicate this association of endometriosis in a UK population, and to test for association with the GSTT1 null mutation or the cytochrome P450 (CYP) 1A1 MspI polymorphism. We genotyped 148 wo...
The relationship between endometriosis and polymorphisms in the N-acetyl transferase 2 (NAT 2) gene was investigated in a UK population, as this gene has been previously implicated in the aetiology of the disease. Point mutations in the gene result in the variant alleles NAT 2 *5, *6 and *7 from the wild-type NAT 2 *4 allele. Homozygotes for the NA...
An association between endometriosis and the glutathione S-transferase (GST) M1 null mutation has been reported in French and Slavic populations. We aimed to replicate this association of endometriosis in a UK population, and to test for association with the GSTT1 null mutation or the cytochrome P450 (CYP) 1A1 MspI polymorphism. We genotyped 148 wo...
Linkage analysis can be problematic in humans because of the lack of large, multigenerational pedigrees and the difficulties in obtaining phenotypic data on all family members. In contrast, large, captive colonies of rhesus macaque are a potentially valuable resource for linkage studies because detailed phenotypic and genealogical data are kept, in...
An association between the N314D polymorphism of galactose-1-phosphate uridyl transferase and endometriosis has recently been reported in a North American population. To determine whether such an association exists in the UK population, we genotyped 148 women with sporadic (n = 91) or familial (n = 57) endometriosis, a control population of 95 male...
Work carried out in the Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine. BLDSC reference no.: D206273. Thesis (D. Phil.)--University of Oxford, 1999. Includes bibliographical references.
In places where the population has shrunk, the average mortality is high compared with places in which the population has grown. The correlation between population change and all-cause standardised mortality ratios was –0·62 (p<0·001); for standardised mortality ratios for the male population, the correlation was –0·68 (p<0·001); and for the female...
Immunization against the human platelet antigen (HPA)-1 alloantigen is the most common cause of severe fetal and neonatal thrombocytopenia. Fetal therapy has substantial risks and its indications need better definition. Of 24,417 consecutive pregnant women, 618 (2.5%) were HPA-1a negative of whom 385 entered an observational study. All were HLA-DRB...
Immunization against the human platelet antigen (HPA)-1 alloantigen is the most common cause of severe fetal and neonatal thrombocytopenia. Fetal therapy has substantial risks and its indications need better definition. Of 24,417 consecutive pregnant women, 618 (2.5%) were HPA-1a negative of whom 385 entered an observational study. All were HLA-DRB...
To describe the occurrence of endometriosis in monozygotic twins.
Postal questionnaire plus confirmation of disease status.
Twins were recruited via the American Endometriosis Association and the National Endometriosis Society of Great Britain and via British gynecologists.
Fourteen twin pairs were concordant for endometriosis, and two were discord...
The autopsy records between 1980 and 1995 of 399 female rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) at the Wisconsin Regional Primate Research Center were examined. Spontaneous endometriosis was found in 81 (20%) of the animals. The mean (+/- SD) ages at death for animals with and without endometriosis were 20.7 +/- 5.5 (range 10-35) and 13.4 +/- 7.7 (range 4-...
We investigated the length of time between the onset of pain symptoms and the surgical diagnosis of endometriosis in women
from the UK and the USA. A total of 218 women with surgically confirmed disease, recruited through endometriosis self-help
groups, completed a postal questionnaire. The mean ± SD delay in diagnosis for women from the USA was 11...
Analysis of the age of onset of pain symptoms in 83 sisterpairs concordant for endometriosis supports the suggestion that
endometriosis has a genetic basis.
Any future programme of antenatal screening of pregnancies for risk of neonatal alloimmune thrombocytopenia will have as a major requirement the availability of cost-effective assays which can be applied to large numbers of samples. To address this, we developed a competitive ELISA to type whole blood samples for the platelet alloantigen HPA1a, bas...