ArticlePopulation health metrics2015
Erosion of the healthy soldier effect in veterans of US military service in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Article in Population health metrics, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. It is linked to trial NCT06429657 (Ketamine for Sedation in Severe Traumatic Brain Injury), which is not on this map. Cited by 16 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Ketamine for Sedation in Severe Traumatic Brain Injury
Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed, 49 citations in OpenAlex.
- Leveraging primary care data to understand military veteran health in England: feasibility study and matched-control comparison of recorded conditions.BMC medicine · 2026Article
- Improving early intervention: identifying risk factors for UK military veterans that access military charities-a case-control study and an AI-powered predictive model.European journal of public health · 2025Article
- Developing a nationwide registry of UK veterans seeking help from sector charities-a machine learning approach to stratification.European journal of public health · 2025Article
- Methodology for the Formulation of the Guidelines for the Management of Moderate to Severe Traumatic Brain Injury in Austere and Combat Environments.Neurosurgery practice · 2024Article
- Military environmental exposures and risk of breast cancer in active-duty personnel and veterans: a scoping review.Frontiers in oncology · 2024Article
- Role of Deployment History on the Association Between Epilepsy and Traumatic Brain Injury in Post-9/11 Era US Veterans.Neurology · 2023Article
- Severity of posttraumatic stress disorder, type 2 diabetes outcomes and all-cause mortality: A retrospective cohort study.Journal of psychosomatic research · 2023Article
- Exposure to war and conflict: The individual and inherited epigenetic effects on health, with a focus on post-traumatic stress disorder.Frontiers in epidemiology · 2023Review
- Factors associated with self-reported health among New Zealand military veterans: a cross-sectional study.BMJ open · 2022Article
- Association of Traumatic Brain Injury With Mortality Among Military Veterans Serving After September 11, 2001.JAMA network open · 2022Article
- Inorganic Dust Exposure During Military Service as a Predictor of Rheumatoid Arthritis and Other Autoimmune Conditions.ACR open rheumatology · 2021Article
- Team Red, White & Blue: a community-based model for harnessing positive social networks to enhance enrichment outcomes in military veterans reintegrating to civilian life.Translational behavioral medicine · 2018Article
- The health and wellbeing needs of veterans: a rapid review.BMC psychiatry · 2017Review
- Diagnosing Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease Among Afghanistan and Iraq Veterans: Veterans Affair's Concordance With Clinical Guidelines for Spirometry Administration.Military medicine · 2017Article
- Thyroid-Stimulating Hormone, Thyroid Hormones, and Risk of Papillary Thyroid Cancer: A Nested Case-Control Study.Cancer epidemiology, biomarkers & prevention : a publication of the American Association for Cancer Research, cosponsored by the American Society of Preventive Oncology · 2017Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundThis research explores the healthy soldier effect (HSE) - a lower mortality risk among veterans relative to the general population-in United States (US) veterans deployed in support of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan (OEF/OIF/OND). While a HSE has been affirmed in other OEF/OIF/OND populations, US veterans of OEF/OIF/OND have not been systematically studied.
methodsUsing US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) administrative data, we identified veterans who (1) had been deployed in support of OEF/OIF/OND between 2002 and 2011 and (2) were enrolled in the VA health care system. We divided the VA population into VA health care utilizers and non-utilizers. We obtained Department of Defense (DOD) administrative data on the OEF/OIF/OND population and obtained VA and DOD mortality data excluding combat deaths from the analyses. Indirect standardization was used to compare VA and DOD cohorts to the US population using total population at risk to compute the Standardized Mortality Ratio (SMR). A directly standardized relative risk (DSRR) was calculated to enable comparisons between cohorts. To compare VA enrollee mortality on military specific characteristics, we used a DOD population standard.
resultsThe overall VA SMR of 2.8 (95% Confidence Interval [CI] 2.8-2.9), VA utilizer SMR of 3.2 (95% CI 3.1-3.3), VA non-utilizer SMR of 0.9 (95% CI 0.8-1.1), and DOD SMR of 1.5 (95% CI 1.4-1.5) provide no evidence of a HSE in any cohort relative to the US standard population. Relative to DOD, both the total VA population SMR of 2.1 (95% CI 2.0-2.2) and the SMR for VA utilizers of 2.3 (95% CI 2.3-2.4) indicate mortality twice what would be expected given DOD mortality rates. In contrast, the VA enrollees who had not used clinical services had 40% lower than expected mortality relative to DOD.
conclusionsNo support was found for the HSE among US veterans of OEF/OIF/OND. These findings may be attributable to a number of factors including post-deployment risk-taking behavior, an abbreviated follow up period, and the nature of the OEF/OIF/OND conflict.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.