This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Walter C. Hulon, MD. MPH; Elizabeth S. Lightfoot, MS; Donald R. Lynam, PhD
Ethyl Corporation Medical Department Baton Rouge, La

JAMA. 1985;254(4):505.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.—

The recent article on blood lead and blood pressure¹ is written so unclearly that it is difficult to understand precisely how the authors meant to use the data.

Immediately obvious to the reader is the fact that the Figure plots blood lead and diastolic blood pressure for subjects aged 12 to 74 years, while the results of the multiple regression analyses in Table 1 are only for subjects aged 21 to 74 years. The text in one section discusses the Figure and later refers to Tables 1 through 3; this inconsistency in the discussion of the data set makes it difficult to follow the article. Nevertheless, the Figure makes it appear that virtually everyone is normotensive, so there are apparently no adverse implications for cardiovascular health based on the "essentially linear" relationship between blood lead and blood pressure. Seemingly, the behavior of the data at extremely high . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?