Editor's choice

Clinical Epidemiology has published more than 100 papers since its start in 2009, and the journal has been indexed in PubMed. This is an expression of the journal’s positive development. It emphasizes the need for a journal focusing on clinical epidemiology in a broad context, which is able to publish important papers quickly, following a thorough peer-review process. As part of the journal’s development we will in future publish a column called “Editor’s choice” on a periodic basis with the purpose of putting selected papers in a clinical and developing perspective. We also encourage scientific debate within the field of the papers we publish, in terms of commentaries and letters to the editor. This paper is the first version of “Editor’s choice,” in which I will cover papers reflecting developments in clinical epidemiology. Cancer is one of the most frequent causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide. More and more patients survive the initial cancer diseases. Therefore the long-term consequences of cancer disease and complications to cancer disease are important research areas for the future. Bone metastasis is one well-known and serious complication of cancer. Li et al conducted an interesting study based on the MarketScan database and fee-for-service Medicare cohort in the US estimating the prevalence of bone metastasis in the American population. Since a larger proportion of bone metastases is asymptomatic at onset, the estimate identified in the paper is a clear underestimation of the real prevalence. The study showed that at least 280,000 American adults are living with bone metastases, and breast, prostate, and lung cancer are responsible for 68% of these cases. The results show that metastatic disease is an area of great public health and clinical importance and clinical epidemiological studies of this area are urgently needed. Syse et al reported another aspect of the consequences of cancer disease. It is well-known that many people, for various reasons, postpone having children until later in life, entailing that more children will have parents with cancer disease. Based on impressive Norwegian register data, the study showed that cancer in parents is more frequent than formerly assumed and that the yearly incidence of parental cancer for children under 18 years is 0.3%, while 4% of all children aged 0–25 years have a parent with cancer disease. There has been a clear decrease in the incidence of mortality in cardiovascular disease over the last 40 years in many countries, and acute myocardial infarct is also decreasing. The prognosis is improving, and more and more patients are living with sequelae of cardiovascular diseases such as heart failure. In an interesting study from Editor’s choice