This month’s focus includes a strong emphasis on the lifecycle approach to epidemiology. Diana Kuh and her colleagues provide us with an apposite Glossary in the Continuing Professional Education section, which demonstrates how this approach has come of age over the past few years; and we also carry several other contributions that draw upon it. The Gallery includes a photographic version in terms of comparison of classroom photographs of school children in London at 25 year intervals, and other papers include:

• a study of socioeconomic status over the life course and stages of cigarette use;

• the influence of social class in childhood, young adulthood, and middle age;

• an investigation of the risk factors for symptomatic osteoarthritis in women.


 See pages 758, 778, 802, 816, 823

As the Glossary brings out, the life cycle or life course approach can provide powerful angles …