Mario Cortina‐borja
Biographic Data
| ID | 4311509 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Mario Cortina‐borja |
| GIVEN NAMES | Mario |
| FAMILY NAME | Cortina‐borja |
| SIGNATURE | BORJA M C |
| AFFILIATIONS | University College London |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0627-2624 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 35 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 37 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 35 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1989 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Clinical prediction models to diagnose neonatal sepsis in low-income and middle-income countries
INTRODUCTION: Neonatal sepsis causes significant morbidity and mortality worldwide but is difficult to diagnose clinically. Clinical prediction models (CPMs) could improve diagnostic accuracy, facilitating earlier treatment for cases and avoiding antibiotic overuse. Neonates in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs) are disproportionately affected by sepsis, yet no review has comprehensively synthesised evidence for CPMs validated in this…
Determinants of Infant Growth in a Birth Cohort in the Nepal Plains
This study aimed to identify the determinants of infant growth in terms of length-for-age z-score (LAZ) in a birth cohort (n = 602) in the plains of Nepal. Children were enrolled within 72 h of birth and followed-up every 28 days until they were 2 years. We fitted mixed-effects linear regression models controlling for multiple measurements within individuals to examine the impact of household and maternal factors, feeding practices and infection …
Health, wealth, or equity? Trade-offs from households’ allocative decisions
Households’ allocative decisions have potentially large implications for the health and welfare of their members. We analyze a dataset of rural Bangladeshi households to estimate: (i) a benchmark level of nutritional adequacy that households could afford by selecting different foods and reallocating them among members, and (ii) the associated trade–offs in terms of income and equity preferences. Using a novel set of non–linear health production f…
Intersectional relationships between age, sex, ethnicity, nationality and experience of racism in the UK using different ethnicity categorisations
Traditionally, research has relied on broad ethnic categories such as "Asian," "Black," "White," "Mixed," and "Other." These categories often mask significant variations in experiences and outcomes among ethnic subgroups. The Intersectional Multilevel Analysis of Individual Heterogeneity and Discriminatory Accuracy (I-MAIHDA) approach has become an increasingly recognised quantitative method to study intersectional health inequities. There is a n…
Evaluating the Concept of Brain Sparing in a High Income Setting, Using Historical Records of Maternal Influenza or Syphilis Infection
INTRODUCTION: In the context of adverse in utero environments, the fetal brain might be preserved at the expense of other tissues. This trade-off, brain sparing, has not been studied in the context of maternal infection. We investigated cases of maternal syphilis in the early 20th century and influenza during the 1918-1920 pandemic, in the Swiss city of Lausanne, a relatively high-income setting. We tested the brain sparing hypothesis, that head …
Generational trends in the transition to womanhood in lowland rural Nepal
OBJECTIVE: In South Asia, studies show secular trends toward slightly later women's marriage and first reproduction. However, data on related biological and social events, such as menarche and age of coresidence with husband, are often missing from these analyses. We assessed generational trends in key life events marking the transition to womanhood in rural lowland Nepal. METHODS: We used data on 110 co-resident mother-in-law (MIL) and daughter-…
Life history trade-offs associated with exposure to low maternal capital are different in sons compared to daughters
Background: Environmental exposures in early life explain variability in many physiological and behavioural traits in adulthood. Recently, we showed that exposure to a composite marker of low maternal capital explained the clustering of adverse behavioural and physical traits in adult daughters in a Brazilian birth cohort. These associations were strongly mediated by whether or not the daughter had reproduced by the age of 18 years. Using evoluti…
Risk factors of mortality in neonates with neonatal encephalopathy in a tertiary newborn care unit in Zimbabwe over a 12-month period
Neonatal encephalopathy (NE) accounts for ~23% of the 2.4 million annual global neonatal deaths. Approximately 99% of global neonatal deaths occur in low-resource settings, however, accurate data from these low-resource settings are scarce. We reviewed risk factors of neonatal mortality in neonates admitted with neonatal encephalopathy from a tertiary neonatal unit in Zimbabwe. A retrospective review of risk factors of short-term neonatal encepha…
Associations between early marriage and preterm delivery
OBJECTIVES: Preterm delivery (<37 weeks gestation) is the largest cause of child mortality worldwide. Marriage and pregnancy during adolescence have been associated with an increased risk of preterm delivery. We investigate independent associations of age at marriage and age at first pregnancy with preterm delivery in a cohort of women from rural lowland Nepal. METHODS: We analyzed data from 17 974 women in the Low Birth Weight South Asia Trial. …
Differences in maternal and early child nutritional status by offspring sex in lowland Nepal
OBJECTIVE: On average, boys grow faster than girls in early life but appear more susceptible to undernutrition. We investigated sex differences in early child growth, and whether maternal nutritional status and diet differed by offspring sex during and after pregnancy in an undernourished population. METHODS: We analyzed longitudinal data from a cluster-randomized trial from plains Nepal, stratifying results by child or gestational age. Children'…
The association between childhood hearing loss and self-reported peer victimisation, depressive symptoms, and self-harm
Childhood HL may predict peer victimisation (in girls), depressive symptoms, and self-harm. Further research is needed to identify HL trajectories and methods to facilitate good mental health in children with HL
Comprehensive analysis of the association of seasonal variability with maternal and neonatal nutrition in lowland Nepal
Objective: To provide a comprehensive seasonal analysis of pregnant mothers’ eating behaviour and maternal/newborn nutritional status in an undernourished population from lowland rural Nepal, where weather patterns, agricultural labour, food availability and disease prevalence vary seasonally. Design: Secondary analysis of cluster-randomised Low Birth Weight South Asia Trial data, applying cosinor analysis to predict seasonal patterns. Outcomes: …
Coming together
This paper investigates how educational and geographic capital are assorted among households in rural Nepal, and how women's marital age may shape this distribution. Our focus on the timing of marriage adds a new dimension to studies of geographies of youth and marital assortment, while our emphasis on the physical and spatial attributes of households leads us to propose the concept of geographic capital, operationalised here as agrarian landhold…
Maternal Risk Factors for Small-for-Gestational-Age Newborns in Mexico
Background: Small for gestational age (SGA) is a key contributor to premature deaths and long-term complications in life. Improved characterization of maternal risk factors associated with this adverse outcome is needed to inform the development of interventions, track progress, and reduce the disease burden. This study aimed to identify socioeconomic, demographic, and clinical factors associated with SGA in Mexico. Methods: We analyzed administr…
Maternal physical, socioeconomic, and demographic characteristics and childbirth complications in rural lowland Nepal
OBJECTIVES: Evolutionary perspectives on human childbirth have primarily focused on characteristics of our species in general, rather than variability within and between contemporary populations. We use an evolutionary framework to explore how physical and demographic characteristics of mothers shape the risks of childbirth complications in rural lowland Nepal, where childbearing typically commences in adolescence and chronic undernutrition is wi…
Modelling the potential for parenting skills interventions to reduce inequalities and population prevalence of children's mental health problems
Parenting programmes can improve parenting quality and, in turn, children's mental health. If scaled-up, they have the potential to reduce population inequalities and prevalence in child mental health problems (MHP). However, this cannot be investigated with trials. Using data from the UK Millennium Cohort Study (18,000 children born 2000-2002), we simulated population impact of scale-up of seven parenting programmes. Predicted probabilities of c…
Relative power
We estimate the effects of antenatal food and cash transfers with women's groups on household allocative behaviour and explore whether these effects are explained by intergenerational bargaining among women. Interventions were tested in randomised-controlled trial in rural Nepal, in a food-insecure context where pregnant women are allocated the least adequate diets. We show households enrolled in a cash transfer intervention allocated pregnant wo…
Independent associations of women's age at marriage and first pregnancy with their height in rural lowland Nepal
OBJECTIVES: In many South Asian communities, the majority of women are married during adolescence and reproduce before 20 years. Early reproduction may adversely affect maternal nutrition and linear growth, however whether early marriage has similar effects is unknown. Shorter women might also be preferentially chosen for earlier marriage. We hypothesized that early marriage and early pregnancy may each be associated with women's shorter height, …
How Much Education Is Needed to Delay Women's Age at Marriage and First Pregnancy
Background: Early childbirth is associated with adverse maternal and child health outcomes. In South Asia, where women generally marry before having children, public health efforts need to focus on delaying marriage. Female education is widely considered the primary means to achieve this. However, it remains unclear how much education is required to delay marriage to the universal minimum age of 18 years, or what predicts marriage age in women la…
The association of maternal nutrition and children’s pre-primary experience with over-age attendance in secondary school
Over-age attendance is increasing but remains under-studied in South Asia.•Children fall behind by entering pre-primary or primary late, and by repeating a grade during/after primary school.•Rural location, thin and uneducated mothers predicted late pre-primary entry.•Educational research and interventions need to focus on the earlier time-point of pre-primary.•Improving maternal nutrition and education may ensure timely progression of children i…
Beyond Bergmann's rule
OBJECTIVES: Human populations exhibit substantial geographical variability in body size and shape. However, the ecological stresses underlying this morphological variability remain poorly understood. The prevailing evolutionary explanation, "Bergmann's rule" assumes that morphological variability represents an adaptive response to average thermal conditions. We hypothesized that other climate factors-annual average precipitation, a marker of ecol…
Acute effects of video-game playing versus television viewing on stress markers and food intake in overweight and obese young men
Disentangling the associations between parental BMI and offspring body composition using the four‐component model
OBJECTIVES: This study sets out to investigate the intergenerational associations between the body mass index (BMI) of parents and the body composition of their offspring. METHODS: The cross-sectional data were analyzed for 511 parent-offspring trios from London and south-east England. The offspring were aged 5-21 years. Parental BMI was obtained by recall and offspring fat mass and lean mass were obtained using the four-component model. Multivar…
Development and validation of a photographic food atlas for portion size assessment in the southern plains of Nepal
Objective To develop and validate a photographic food atlas of common foods for dietary assessment in southern Nepal. Design We created a life-sized photographic atlas of forty locally prepared foods. Between March and June 2014, data collectors weighed portion sizes that respondents consumed during one mealtime and then a different data collector revisited the household the next day to record respondents’ estimations of their previous day’s inta…
Environmental influences on children's physical activity
BACKGROUND: This paper aims to assess whether 7-year-olds' physical activity is associated with family and area-level measures of the physical and socioeconomic environments. METHODS: We analysed the association of environments with physical activity in 6497 singleton children from the UK Millennium Cohort Study with reliable accelerometer data (≥2 days and ≥10 h/day). Activity levels were assessed as counts per minute; minutes of moderate to vig…
Some Remarks on Uto-Aztecan Classification
Beyond Bergmann's rule
OBJECTIVES: Human populations exhibit substantial geographical variability in body size and shape. However, the ecological stresses underlying this morphological variability remain poorly understood. The prevailing evolutionary explanation, "Bergmann's rule" assumes that morphological variability represents an adaptive response to average thermal conditions. We hypothesized that other climate factors-annual average precipitation, a marker of ecol…
Relative power
We estimate the effects of antenatal food and cash transfers with women's groups on household allocative behaviour and explore whether these effects are explained by intergenerational bargaining among women. Interventions were tested in randomised-controlled trial in rural Nepal, in a food-insecure context where pregnant women are allocated the least adequate diets. We show households enrolled in a cash transfer intervention allocated pregnant wo…
Coming together
This paper investigates how educational and geographic capital are assorted among households in rural Nepal, and how women's marital age may shape this distribution. Our focus on the timing of marriage adds a new dimension to studies of geographies of youth and marital assortment, while our emphasis on the physical and spatial attributes of households leads us to propose the concept of geographic capital, operationalised here as agrarian landhold…
Independent associations of women's age at marriage and first pregnancy with their height in rural lowland Nepal
OBJECTIVES: In many South Asian communities, the majority of women are married during adolescence and reproduce before 20 years. Early reproduction may adversely affect maternal nutrition and linear growth, however whether early marriage has similar effects is unknown. Shorter women might also be preferentially chosen for earlier marriage. We hypothesized that early marriage and early pregnancy may each be associated with women's shorter height, …
Acute effects of video-game playing versus television viewing on stress markers and food intake in overweight and obese young men
Environmental influences on children's physical activity
BACKGROUND: This paper aims to assess whether 7-year-olds' physical activity is associated with family and area-level measures of the physical and socioeconomic environments. METHODS: We analysed the association of environments with physical activity in 6497 singleton children from the UK Millennium Cohort Study with reliable accelerometer data (≥2 days and ≥10 h/day). Activity levels were assessed as counts per minute; minutes of moderate to vig…
Some Remarks on Uto-Aztecan Classification
Assessing non-linear estimation procedures for human growth models
The five models studied are reasonably robust against most of the problems encountered when fitting non-linear models to human growth data; this confirms some conjectures which have been taken for granted by a large number of authors. The presence of cyclical patterns is a consequence of the global description of growth attempted by these five models
Mortality of infected and uninfected infants born to HIV-infected mothers in Africa
P23 Patterns of antiretroviral therapy in a European study of HIV-infected children and adolescents
Background Antiretroviral therapy (ART) has resulted in increasing median survival times in HIV-infected individuals by sustaining viral load suppression. Since children and adolescents are likely to have long-term exposure to ART, it is important to understand patterns of drug use to investigate the emergence of unintended sequelae. Aim To investigate patterns of ART in children and adolescents. Study Design Cross-sectional analysis of HIV-infec…
Fertility intentions of HIV-infected women in the United Kingdom
In the United Kingdom (UK), the number of pregnancies in HIV-infected women has increased dramatically over the last decade, but attitudes towards childbearing among infected women have not been previously described. The aim of this survey was to explore fertility intentions among HIV-infected women and to assess the effect of HIV treatment and interventions for prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) on these intentions. HIV-infected …
Modelling accelerometer data from 7-year old British children using functional analysis of variance
Background There is increasing evidence of the impact of physical activity (PA) in childhood on future health and well-being. The use of accelerometers in population-based studies provides objectively measured activity levels, although there are very few studies using this technology to collect data from young children. The resulting data are highly irregular trajectories and contains periods of activity reflecting multiple seasonal patterns, for…
The association between ethnicity and late presentation to antenatal care among pregnant women living with HIV in the UK and Ireland
UK and Ireland guidelines state that all pregnant women should have their first antenatal care appointment by 13 weeks of pregnancy (antenatal booking). We present the results of an analysis looking at the association between maternal ethnicity and late antenatal booking in HIV-positive women in the UK and Ireland. We analysed data from the National Study of HIV in Pregnancy and Childhood (NSHPC). We included all pregnancies in women who were dia…
Different associations of subscapular and triceps skinfold thicknesses with pathogen load
OBJECTIVES: The dominant evolutionary perspective on adipose tissue has considered it a relatively inert energy store. However, variability in adipose tissue distribution has recently been associated with age, parity, thermal environment and immune function. Genes regulating the innate immune system are more strongly expressed in deep-lying than peripheral adipose tissue. We hypothesized that central adiposity would correlate more strongly than p…
Adherence to antiretroviral therapy during pregnancy and the first year postpartum among HIV-positive women in Ukraine
Our results highlight unmet needs for counselling and support. We identify some groups at risk of poor ART adherence, including women with markers of social vulnerability and those with low ART-related self-efficacy, who may benefit from targeted interventions
Contribution of respiratory tract infections to child deaths
RTI-related deaths have not declined in the last decade except in infants. Targeted strategies to prevent the winter excess of RTIs and to treat RTIs in children, particularly children with chronic conditions, may reduce RTI-related deaths
Environmental influences on children's physical activity
BACKGROUND: This paper aims to assess whether 7-year-olds' physical activity is associated with family and area-level measures of the physical and socioeconomic environments. METHODS: We analysed the association of environments with physical activity in 6497 singleton children from the UK Millennium Cohort Study with reliable accelerometer data (≥2 days and ≥10 h/day). Activity levels were assessed as counts per minute; minutes of moderate to vig…
Disentangling the associations between parental BMI and offspring body composition using the four‐component model
OBJECTIVES: This study sets out to investigate the intergenerational associations between the body mass index (BMI) of parents and the body composition of their offspring. METHODS: The cross-sectional data were analyzed for 511 parent-offspring trios from London and south-east England. The offspring were aged 5-21 years. Parental BMI was obtained by recall and offspring fat mass and lean mass were obtained using the four-component model. Multivar…
Development and validation of a photographic food atlas for portion size assessment in the southern plains of Nepal
Objective To develop and validate a photographic food atlas of common foods for dietary assessment in southern Nepal. Design We created a life-sized photographic atlas of forty locally prepared foods. Between March and June 2014, data collectors weighed portion sizes that respondents consumed during one mealtime and then a different data collector revisited the household the next day to record respondents’ estimations of their previous day’s inta…
Acute effects of video-game playing versus television viewing on stress markers and food intake in overweight and obese young men
Beyond Bergmann's rule
OBJECTIVES: Human populations exhibit substantial geographical variability in body size and shape. However, the ecological stresses underlying this morphological variability remain poorly understood. The prevailing evolutionary explanation, "Bergmann's rule" assumes that morphological variability represents an adaptive response to average thermal conditions. We hypothesized that other climate factors-annual average precipitation, a marker of ecol…
How Much Education Is Needed to Delay Women's Age at Marriage and First Pregnancy
Background: Early childbirth is associated with adverse maternal and child health outcomes. In South Asia, where women generally marry before having children, public health efforts need to focus on delaying marriage. Female education is widely considered the primary means to achieve this. However, it remains unclear how much education is required to delay marriage to the universal minimum age of 18 years, or what predicts marriage age in women la…
The association of maternal nutrition and children’s pre-primary experience with over-age attendance in secondary school
Over-age attendance is increasing but remains under-studied in South Asia.•Children fall behind by entering pre-primary or primary late, and by repeating a grade during/after primary school.•Rural location, thin and uneducated mothers predicted late pre-primary entry.•Educational research and interventions need to focus on the earlier time-point of pre-primary.•Improving maternal nutrition and education may ensure timely progression of children i…
Maternal Risk Factors for Small-for-Gestational-Age Newborns in Mexico
Background: Small for gestational age (SGA) is a key contributor to premature deaths and long-term complications in life. Improved characterization of maternal risk factors associated with this adverse outcome is needed to inform the development of interventions, track progress, and reduce the disease burden. This study aimed to identify socioeconomic, demographic, and clinical factors associated with SGA in Mexico. Methods: We analyzed administr…
Maternal physical, socioeconomic, and demographic characteristics and childbirth complications in rural lowland Nepal
OBJECTIVES: Evolutionary perspectives on human childbirth have primarily focused on characteristics of our species in general, rather than variability within and between contemporary populations. We use an evolutionary framework to explore how physical and demographic characteristics of mothers shape the risks of childbirth complications in rural lowland Nepal, where childbearing typically commences in adolescence and chronic undernutrition is wi…
Modelling the potential for parenting skills interventions to reduce inequalities and population prevalence of children's mental health problems
Parenting programmes can improve parenting quality and, in turn, children's mental health. If scaled-up, they have the potential to reduce population inequalities and prevalence in child mental health problems (MHP). However, this cannot be investigated with trials. Using data from the UK Millennium Cohort Study (18,000 children born 2000-2002), we simulated population impact of scale-up of seven parenting programmes. Predicted probabilities of c…
Relative power
We estimate the effects of antenatal food and cash transfers with women's groups on household allocative behaviour and explore whether these effects are explained by intergenerational bargaining among women. Interventions were tested in randomised-controlled trial in rural Nepal, in a food-insecure context where pregnant women are allocated the least adequate diets. We show households enrolled in a cash transfer intervention allocated pregnant wo…
Independent associations of women's age at marriage and first pregnancy with their height in rural lowland Nepal
OBJECTIVES: In many South Asian communities, the majority of women are married during adolescence and reproduce before 20 years. Early reproduction may adversely affect maternal nutrition and linear growth, however whether early marriage has similar effects is unknown. Shorter women might also be preferentially chosen for earlier marriage. We hypothesized that early marriage and early pregnancy may each be associated with women's shorter height, …
Life history trade-offs associated with exposure to low maternal capital are different in sons compared to daughters
Background: Environmental exposures in early life explain variability in many physiological and behavioural traits in adulthood. Recently, we showed that exposure to a composite marker of low maternal capital explained the clustering of adverse behavioural and physical traits in adult daughters in a Brazilian birth cohort. These associations were strongly mediated by whether or not the daughter had reproduced by the age of 18 years. Using evoluti…
Risk factors of mortality in neonates with neonatal encephalopathy in a tertiary newborn care unit in Zimbabwe over a 12-month period
Neonatal encephalopathy (NE) accounts for ~23% of the 2.4 million annual global neonatal deaths. Approximately 99% of global neonatal deaths occur in low-resource settings, however, accurate data from these low-resource settings are scarce. We reviewed risk factors of neonatal mortality in neonates admitted with neonatal encephalopathy from a tertiary neonatal unit in Zimbabwe. A retrospective review of risk factors of short-term neonatal encepha…
Associations between early marriage and preterm delivery
OBJECTIVES: Preterm delivery (<37 weeks gestation) is the largest cause of child mortality worldwide. Marriage and pregnancy during adolescence have been associated with an increased risk of preterm delivery. We investigate independent associations of age at marriage and age at first pregnancy with preterm delivery in a cohort of women from rural lowland Nepal. METHODS: We analyzed data from 17 974 women in the Low Birth Weight South Asia Trial. …
Medicine (28 works) · Demography (21 works) · Internal Medicine (14 works) · Environmental health (13 works) · Pediatrics (13 works) · Pregnancy (13 works) · Biology (11 works) · Population (11 works) · Birth, Development, and Health (8 works) · Geography (8 works)