Regional Variation on Rates of Bronchopulmonary Dysplasia and Associated Risk Factors

Background. An abnormally high incidence (44%) of bronchopulmonary dysplasia with variations in rates among cities was observed in Colombia among premature infants. Objective. To identify risk factors that could explain the observed high incidence and regional variations of bronchopulmonary dysplasia. Study Design. A case-control study was designed for testing the hypothesis that differences in the disease rates were not explained by differences in city-of-birth specific population characteristics or by differences in respiratory management practices in the first 7 days of life, among cities. Results. Multivariate analysis showed that premature rupture of membranes, exposure to mechanical ventilation after received nasal CPAP, no surfactant exposure, use of rescue surfactant (instead of early surfactant), PDA, sepsis and the median daily FIO2, were associated with a higher risk of dysplasia. Significant differences between cases and controls were found among cities. Models exploring for associations between city of birth and dysplasia showed that being born in the highest altitude city (Bogotá) was associated with a higher risk of dysplasia (OR 1.82 95% CI 1.31–2.53). Conclusions. Bronchopulmonary dysplasia was manly explained by traditional risk factors. Findings suggest that altitude may play an important role in the development of this disease. Prenatal steroids did not appear to be protective at high altitude.

Vowels in the 305: A First Pass at Miami Latino English

In this paper, I present preliminary findings of the first-large scale, systematic study of English Latino vowels in Miami. Sociolinguistic interviews were conducted with 25 Miami-born participants: 10 Anglo Whites and 15 Latinos with varying degrees of Spanish fluency. Here I focus on the vowel quality (/i, ɪ, ai, æ, ɔ, u /) in the speech of the 2nd and 3rd generations to examine the nature of influence of Spanish on English in Miami over the past 60 years. I conduct an in-depth analysis of the vowel productions of two female speakers, Maria & Blaze, to show the range of vowel productions in Miami Latino English. The vocalic analysis is comprised of a minimum of 15 non-repeating tokens of each vowel. These vowels were extracted from interview data and analyzed for F1, F2, and F3 values using PRAAT. Two allophones of /æ/ were considered: pre-nasal and pre-non-nasal, since Latinos in other regions have shown to resist pre-nasal /æ/ raising (Thomas 2001).