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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Severe infections leading to hospitalizations during childhood are associated with lower school achievement in adolescence,reports a study in the July issue of The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal (PIDJ).
In the nationwide study of nearly 600,000 Danish children, higher numbers of hospitalizations for infections were associated with a reduced probability of completing ninth grade, as well as with lower test scores, according to the new research by Ole Köhler-Fosberg, MD, of Aarhus University Hospital and colleagues. An expert commentary discusses the role of vaccination in the relationship between investment in health and protecting and improving "human capital."
The study included nationwide data of 598,553 children born in Denmark between 1987 and 1997. The researchers looked at two measures of childhood infections: hospital admission for infections, an indicator of moderate to severe infections; and prescriptions for anti-infective drugs (such as antibiotics) in primary care, reflecting less-severe infections.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Tuesday July 17 2018, @02:55PM (7 children)
100% agree. I acknowledge the correlation they've observed, but I question the causality:
Perhaps the infections cause brain damage.
Perhaps there's a biological connection between learning disability and susceptibility to infection.
How about the long-term effects of antibiotics on the brain?
Maybe some people are more prone to learning disability due to some antibiotic after-effect that isn't well understood yet?
Maybe the antibiotic kills some good bacteria that aren't well understood yet? For example, recent research discovered a symbiotic relationship between certain cancers and certain bacteria which secrete cancer-protecting enzymes. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/09/how-bacteria-could-protect-tumors-from-anticancer-drugs/539670/ [theatlantic.com] Perhaps there are bacteria which protect the brain from currently unknown forces, such as prions, and the antibiotic kills the protectors?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by PiMuNu on Tuesday July 17 2018, @03:05PM (5 children)
My middle-class bias is that you are more likely to be admitted to hospital for an infectious disease if you are poor, disabled, or some other similar confounding factor.
FTFA:
>The associations were adjusted for other factors linked to school achievement, such
> as birthweight, mental and physical health, and parents' education and mental health.
I think that is very difficult to do correctly. It would be interesting to know how they did it...
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Tuesday July 17 2018, @03:24PM
For sure that and many other factors. I didn't include them because they've been discussed above.
And being a nerd, I'm more fascinated by the biology / science. Throughout history there have been diseases which had no cure, but if you were rich enough, you could get the best available "treatment" - symptom relief, prolong life, pain relief, etc. Then along comes a simple vaccine or antibiotic and all but the absolute poorest can survive TB, typhoid, strep, you know, the long list of almost forgotten diseases that my poor brain can't come up with because I have much more pressing things than typing here... I know, my priorities are inverted. :-\
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday July 18 2018, @03:25PM (3 children)
Are you USAian? Keep in mind that wealth inequality is radically lower in Denmark, so poverty is going to play a much lower role. Especially since they have universal health care, so that there's very little incentive to neglect minor health problems until they become serious, unlike in the US.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Wednesday July 18 2018, @04:30PM (2 children)
> so poverty is going to play a much lower role
It's not all roses in Europe. I believe wealth inequality still translates to worse health. Citation needed.
But... your post does highlight just how difficult it is to account for these systematic effects. Say, for example, the researchers want to correct for the poverty bias. I guess the way to do this is to find someone who has studied "effect of poverty on education outcomes" and someone who has studied "effect of poverty on healthcare outcomes" and look for correlations. But as you just pointed out, the correlations are different between countries. Indeed, they are very likely different between e.g. urban and rural populations in the same country. What about all of the other confounding factors? What about cross-correlations *between* the confounding factors themselves. (e.g. rural vs urban population). Anecdotally, I know someone who used to sit on UK's NICE healthcare committee, and to paraphrase "we heard a very earnest young chap talking about the statistics. No one understood it but it all sounded jolly convincing".
I maintain that subtracting off these systematic effects is very, very hard. So I don't believe the results.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday July 18 2018, @07:11PM (1 child)
You're making it too complicated - if you want to correct for poverty bias, just compare the outcomes of people in the same socioeconomic strata. If you also want to correct for regional biases, do the same for regional sampling.
And the general incompetence of policy wonks when it comes to actually understanding the science they should be casing their decisions on is completely irrelevant, except to point out that even after the science is settled, it's not relevant to policy unless you can explain it well enough to convince a politician (whose meal ticket may well depend on them failing to be convinced)
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Thursday July 19 2018, @08:10AM
> if you want to correct for poverty bias, just compare the outcomes of people in the same socioeconomic strata.
> If you also want to correct for regional biases, do the same for regional sampling.
That doesn't work because it is a very correlated problem. The effect of being poor in an inner city sink estate is very different to the effect of being poor in a small village in the countryside. The problems are completely different. To pick an example:-
* In the city, poverty is much more strongly correlated with drug abuse.
* In the city, if you are poor it is much harder to fund leisure activities. In the countryside you can ride a bike or go for a walk.
* In the countryside, not being able to afford a car is a big deal. You can't get to the doctors or secondary schools easily. Public transport coverage is worse.
So you can't correct for each effect independently. GGP even said this, when they said that the effect of being in US is completely different to effect of being in Denmark.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 17 2018, @07:35PM
Or that worse students are more likely to be the partying, socialising, exchanging bodily fluids types, rather than sit alone studying types. Take a guess at which set of activities has a higher likelihood of transmitting infections?