A Million Person Study Innovation: Evaluating Cognitive Impairment and other Morbidity Outcomes from Chronic Radiation Exposure Through Linkages with the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services Assessment and Claims Data

The study of One Million U.S. Radiation Workers and Veterans, the Million Person Study (MPS), examines the health consequences, both cancer and non-cancer, of exposure to ionizing radiation received gradually over time. Recently the MPS has focused on mortality patterns from neurological and behavioral conditions, e.g., Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, dementia, and motor neuron disease such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. A fuller picture of radiation-related late effects comes from studying both mortality and the occurrence (incidence) of conditions not leading to death. Accordingly, the MPS is identifying neurocognitive diagnoses from fee-for-service insurance claims from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), among Medicare beneficiaries beginning in 1999 (the earliest date claims data are available). Linkages to date have identified ∼540,000 workers with available health information. Such linkages provide individual information on important co-factor and confounding variables such as smoking, alcohol consumption, blood pressure, obesity, diabetes and many other health and demographic characteristics. The total person-level set of time-dependent variables, outcomes, organ-specific dose measures, co-factors, and demographics will be massive and much too large to be evaluated with standard software. Thus, development of specialized open-source software designed for large datasets (Colossus) is nearly complete. The wealth of information available from CMS claims data, coupled with individual dose reconstructions, will thus greatly enhance the quality and precision of health evaluations for this new field of low-dose radiation and neurocognitive effects.

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Publication Details

Journal
Radiation Research
Published
2024-10-28
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1667/rade-23-00186.1
Citations
8
Primary Topic
Health, Environment, Cognitive Aging
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
2.20

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article

A Million Person Study Innovation: Evaluating Cognitive Impairment and other Morbidity Outcomes from Chronic Radiation Exposure Through Linkages with the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services Assessment and Claims Data

Kali S. Thomas, Sarah S. Cohen, Sergei Y. Tolmachev, Kathryn D. Held et al.
8 citations
Radiation Research
Health, Environment, Cognitive Aging
2.20
article

A Million Person Study Innovation: Evaluating Cognitive Impairment and other Morbidity Outcomes from Chronic Radiation Exposure Through Linkages with the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services Assessment and Claims Data

Kali S. Thomas, Sarah S. Cohen, Sergei Y. Tolmachev, Kathryn D. Held, Caleigh Samuels, Loren Lipworth, David M. Bierman, Michael T. Mumma, Ryan B. Norman, John D. Boice, Benjamin C. French, Julie C. Lima, Linda Walsh, Amir A. Bahadori, Nolan E. Hertel, Daniel Andresen, Eric Giunta, Lawrence T. Dauer, Michael Bellamy, Kathleen B. Miller, Laura M. Keohane, Steve R. Blattnig, Richard Leggett
article en
8 citations

Abstract

The study of One Million U.S. Radiation Workers and Veterans, the Million Person Study (MPS), examines the health consequences, both cancer and non-cancer, of exposure to ionizing radiation received gradually over time. Recently the MPS has focused on mortality patterns from neurological and behavioral conditions, e.g., Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, dementia, and motor neuron disease such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. A fuller picture of radiation-related late effects comes from studying both mortality and the occurrence (incidence) of conditions not leading to death. Accordingly, the MPS is identifying neurocognitive diagnoses from fee-for-service insurance claims from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), among Medicare beneficiaries beginning in 1999 (the earliest date claims data are available). Linkages to date have identified ∼540,000 workers with available health information. Such linkages provide individual information on important co-factor and confounding variables such as smoking, alcohol consumption, blood pressure, obesity, diabetes and many other health and demographic characteristics. The total person-level set of time-dependent variables, outcomes, organ-specific dose measures, co-factors, and demographics will be massive and much too large to be evaluated with standard software. Thus, development of specialized open-source software designed for large datasets (Colossus) is nearly complete. The wealth of information available from CMS claims data, coupled with individual dose reconstructions, will thus greatly enhance the quality and precision of health evaluations for this new field of low-dose radiation and neurocognitive effects.

Radiation ResearchVol. 202(6)
Oak Ridge National Laboratory (US), Georgia Institute of Technology (US), Langley Research Center (US), National Institute of Aerospace (US), Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (US), Johns Hopkins University (US), Washington State University Tri-Cities (US), University of St. Thomas - Minnesota (US), Kansas State University (US), Vanderbilt University (US), University of Zurich (CH), Brown University (US), National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements (US), Vanderbilt University Medical Center (US)
U.S. Department of Energy, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Nuclear Safety and Security Commission, National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Cancer Institute, Naval Sea Systems Command
Good health and well-being
Openalex Percentile: Top 13%
Health, Environment, Cognitive Aging
2.20
DOIOpen Access PDFOpenAlex
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