Rationale: Single-site clinic-based studies suggest an increasing prevalence of pulmonary nontuberculous mycobacteria (NTM) disease, but systematic data are lacking. Objectives: To describe prevalence and trends for NTM lung disease at four geographically diverse integrated heath care delivery systems in the United States. Methods: We abstracted mycobacterial culture results from electronic laboratory databases and linked to other datasets containing clinical and demographic information. Possible cases were defined as a single positive NTM pulmonary isolate, and definite cases were defined as two positive sputum cultures, or one positive culture from a bronchoalveolar lavage or lung biopsy. Annual prevalence was calculated using United States census data; average annual prevalence is presented for [2004][2005][2006]. Poisson regression models were used to estimate the annual percent change in prevalence. Measurements and Main Results: A total of 28,697 samples from 7,940 patients were included in the analysis. Of these, 3,988 (50%) were defined as possible cases, and 1,865 (47%) of these were defined as definite cases. Average annual (2004)(2005)(2006) site-specific prevalence ranged from 1.4 to 6.6 per 100,000. Prevalence was 1.l-to 1.6-fold higher among women relative to men across sites. The prevalence of NTM lung disease was increasing significantly at the two sites where trends were studied, by 2.6% per year among women and 2.9% per year among men. Among persons aged greater than or equal to 60 years, annual prevalence increased from 19.6 per 100,000 during 1994-1996 to 26.7 per 100,000 during [2004][2005][2006]. Conclusions: The epidemiology of nontuberculous mycobacterial lung disease is changing, with a predominance of women and increasing prevalence at the sites studied.

Context: Epidemiologic studies have reported that cigarette smoking is inversely associated with Parkinson disease (PD). However, questions remain regarding the effect of age at smoking onset, time since quitting, and race/ ethnicity that have not been addressed due to sample size constraints. This comprehensive assessment of the apparent reduced risk of PD associated with smoking may provide important leads for treatment and prevention.Objective: To determine whether race/ethnicity, sex, education, age at diagnosis, and type of tobacco modify the observed effects of smoking on PD. Design, Setting, and Participants: We conducted the first ever pooled analysis of PD combining individuallevel data from 8 US case-control and 3 cohort studies (Nurses' Health Study, Health Professionals Follow-Up Study, and Honolulu-Asia Aging Study) conducted between 1960 and 2004. Case-control studies provided data for 2328 PD cases and 4113 controls matched by age, sex, and ethnicity; cohort studies contributed 488 cases and 4880 controls selected from age-and sex-matched risk sets. Main Outcome Measure: Incident PD.Results: We confirmed inverse associations between PD and smoking and found these to be generally stronger in current compared with former smokers; the associations were stronger in cohort than in case-control studies. We observed inverse trends with pack-years smoked at every age at onset except the very elderly (Ͼ75 years of age), and the reduction of risk lessened with years since quitting smoking. The risk reductions we observed for white and Asian patients were not seen in Hispanic and African American patients. We also found an inverse association both for smoking cigars and/or pipes and for chewing tobacco in male subjects. Conclusions: Our data support a dose-dependent reduction of PD risk associated with cigarette smoking and potentially with other types of tobacco use. Importantly, effects seemed not to be influenced by sex or education. Differences observed by race and age at diagnosis warrant further study.

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