The abstract is read at the publisher; the summary is JClub's.
A doubling of urinary cadmium in U.S. adults aged 40+ is linked to shorter conditional survival follow-up by about -1.57 years at the 10th quantile.
- Why it matters: Prior analyses emphasize average mortality risk, but they do not show how low-level metal exposure shifts the lower tail of survival where premature deaths concentrate.
- What they did: Using NHANES 1999–2018 linked to the National Death Index (n = 29,652; 7,215 deaths), censored quantile regression estimated associations at conditional quantiles τ = 0.10, 0.25, and 0.50 on the log2 exposure scale.
- The result: Urinary cadmium showed negative associations at τ = 0.10, 0.25, and 0.50 (all Benjamini Hochberg q < 0.001), while urinary arsenic-metabolite sum was not associated and whole-blood total mercury was linked to longer follow-up.
The findingWhy it mattersWhat they didThe result
AI summary of the abstract · may contain errors · not medical advice · read the paper.