OBJECTIVE To evaluate the association between body mass index (BMI, kg m−2) and mortality rate among Hispanic adults. METHODS AND PROCEDURES Analysis of five data sets (total N = 16 798) identified after searching for publicly available, prospective cohort data sets containing relevant information for at least 500 Hispanic respondents (≥18 years at baseline), at least 5 years of mortality follow-up, and measured height and weight. Data sets included the third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, the Puerto Rico Heart Health Program (PRHHP), the Hispanic Established Population for Epidemiologic Studies of the Elderly (HEPESE), the San Antonio Heart Study (SAHS) and the Sacramento Area Latino Study on Aging. RESULTS Cox proportional hazards regression models, adjusting for sex and smoking, were fit within three attained-age strata (18 to younger than 60 years, 60 to younger than 70 years, and 70 years and older). We found that underweight was associated with elevated mortality rate for all age groups in the PRHHP (hazard ratios [HRs] = 1.38–1.60) and the SAHS (HRs = 1.88–2.51). Overweight (HRs = 0.38 and 0.84) and obesity grade 2–3 (HRs = 0.75 and 0.60) associated with reduced mortality rate in the HEPESE dataset for those in the 60 to younger than 70 years, and 70 years and older attained-age strata. Weighted estimates combining the HRs across the data sets revealed a similar pattern. CONCLUSION Among Hispanic adults, there was no clear evidence that overweight and obesity associate with elevated mortality rate.

We evaluated whether the obesity-associated years of life lost (YLL) have decreased over calendar time. We implemented a meta-analysis including only studies with ≥2 serial BMI assessments at different calendar years. For each BMI category (normal weight: BMI 18.5 to <25 [reference], overweight: BMI 25 to <30, grade 1 obesity: BMI 30 to <35, and grade 2–3 obesity: BMI ≥35), we estimated the YLL change between 1970 and 1990. Due to low sample sizes for blacks, results are reported on whites. Among men aged≤60 years YLL for grade 1 obesity increased by 0.72 years (p<0.001) and by 1.02 years (p=0.01) for grade 2–3 obesity. For men aged>60, YLL for grade 1 obesity decreased by 1.02 years (p<0.001), and increased by 0.63 years for grade 2–3 obesity (p=0.63). Among women aged≤60, YLL for grade 1 obesity decreased by 4.21years (p<0.001) and by 4.97 years (p<0.001) for grade 2–3 obesity. In women aged>60, YLL for grade 1 obesity decreased by 3.98 years (p<0.001) and by 2.64 years (p=0.001) for grade 2–3 obesity. Grade 1 obesity’s association with decreased longevity has reduced for older white men. For white women, there is evidence of a decline in the obesity YLL association across all ages.

In the fields of genomics and high dimensional biology (HDB), massive multiple testing prompts the use of extremely small significance levels. Because tail areas of statistical distributions are needed for hypothesis testing, the accuracy of these areas is important to confidently make scientific judgments. Previous work on accuracy was primarily focused on evaluating professionally written statistical software, like SAS, on the Statistical Reference Datasets (StRD) provided by National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and on the accuracy of tail areas in statistical distributions. The goal of this paper is to provide guidance to investigators, who are developing their own custom scientific software built upon numerical libraries written by others. In specific, we evaluate the accuracy of small tail areas from cumulative distribution functions (CDF) of the Chisquare and t-distribution by comparing several open-source, free, or commercially licensed numerical libraries in Java, C, and R to widely accepted standards of comparison like ELV and DCDFLIB. In our evaluation, the C libraries and R functions are consistently accurate up to six significant digits. Amongst the evaluated Java libraries, Colt is most accurate. These languages and libraries are popular choices among programmers developing scientific software, so the results herein can be useful to programmers in choosing libraries for CDF accuracy.