bookofjoe12h ago

Alzheimer's disease mortality among taxi and ambulance drivers (2024)

https://www.bmj.com/content/387/bmj-2024-082194

Alzheimer’s disease mortality among taxi and ambulance drivers: population based cross sectional study

Objective To analyze mortality attributed to Alzheimer’s disease among taxi drivers and ambulance drivers, occupations that demand frequent spatial and navigational processing, compared with other occupations. Design Population based cross-sectional study. Setting Use of death certificates from the National Vital Statistics System in the United States, which were linked to occupation, 1 January 2020-31 December 2022. Participants Deceased adults aged 18 years and older. Main outcomes measures Among 443 occupations studied, percentage of deaths attributed to Alzheimer’s disease for taxi drivers and ambulance drivers and each of the remaining 441 occupations, adjusting for age at death and other sociodemographic factors. Results Of 8 972 221 people who had died with occupational information, 3.88% (348 328) had Alzheimer’s disease listed as a cause of death. Among taxi drivers, 1.03% (171/16 658) died from Alzheimer’s disease, while among ambulance drivers, the rate was 0.74% (10/1348). After adjustment, ambulance drivers (0.91% (95% confidence interval 0.35% to 1.48%)) and taxi drivers (1.03% (0.87% to 1.18%)) had the lowest proportion of deaths due to Alzheimer’s disease of all occupations examined. This trend was not observed in other transportation related jobs that are less reliant on real time spatial and navigational processing or for other types of dementia. Results were consistent whether Alzheimer’s disease was recorded as an underlying or contributing cause of death. Conclusions Taxi drivers and ambulance drivers, occupations involving frequent navigational and spatial processing, had the lowest proportions of deaths attributed to Alzheimer’s disease of all occupations. Data are publicly available.

The BMJ
Show threadjimmar11h ago
One of the first signs that a somebody has Alzheimer's is that they'll get lost. E.g., they've been attending church on Thursdays nights at the same chapel for 15 years, but suddenly they forgot how to get home after a recent service. Part of the reason for the findings in the current study is that people quit those professions when they feel themselves starting to struggle.
Show threadaetherspawn
Is the profession cached in the data when they leave the job? And does the data attribute 2 entries for someone with 2 careers. That’s the question I think
1:59amWeb
Show threadsmelendez11h ago

They explain it in the article. Someone, often the funeral director filling out the death certificate, asks what the deceased did for most of their working life.

I’m a little skeptical of the category “ambulance drivers; not emergency medical technicians” as reliably coded, because people will often say so-and-so “drove an ambulance” when they were actually an EMT or paramedic. But it’s also not clear to me that would invalidate the findings.