November was another busy month for the journal, and we welcome four new papers to the Top Ten Most Read list this month. In at number one is a cohort study carried out in Sweden by Bacelis et al, aiming to determine whether uterine distention is associated with pregnancy duration. Authors investigated by modelling uterine distention by interaction between maternal height and uterine load, finding that maternal height was significantly associated with child’s gestational age at birth.
At number five is a UK study looking at the epidemiology of stab injuries in young people, which has been popular in the press this month and has been picked up by 13 news outlets. The authors observed admissions to an urban major trauma centre and found that age, gender and deprivation status are key indicators in the risk of violent injury in young people and that there are geographical patterns according to age group: for example, the immediate after-school period was associated with a spike in incident frequency in children.
The RIFT study group enter the list at number six, with a protocol for a multicentre observational study looking at the contemporary negative appendicectomy rate in centres in the UK. With over a fifth of UK patients undergoing appendicectomy having been proven to have a histologically normal appendix (negative appendicectomy), this study aims to collect high quality data on these events. Finally, new to the list at number nine, Kim et al seek to answer the question of the direction of the relationship between income and obesity via a systematic review and meta-analysis. By assessing the importance of social causation and reverse causality, the results of this paper suggest that there is more consistent evidence for reverse causality. The authors conclude by stating that there is a need to examine reverse causality processes in more detail to understand further the relation between income and obesity.
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