The prevalence of HIV was significantly higher among unbooked patients with no formal education than in better educated subjects.
For instance, Portuguese subjects with a university degree tend to exercise less [ 31] and to remain sit longer [ 32] than lower educated subjects; subjects with higher education also tend to have a lower quality diet [ 33] with a higher fat content [ 34].
Studies assessing the influence of education on recall in drug utilization have concluded that agreement between questionnaires and information retrieved from record data increases with education [ 21, 22], although less educated subjects tend to use medicines more than better educated ones [ 1].
Seroprevalence of Toxo-IgG antibodies was lowest among the educated subjects (19% of the respondents with tertiary education) and among females in both study groups.
We also investigated the cognitive reserve hypothesis on our population and showed that subjects with a higher education level had a significantly thinner cortex than less educated subjects with the same level of cognitive performance.
In the same period there was an increase of bottled water use from 17% to 21% among subjects with a lower educational level and from 26%to33%3% among the more highly educated subjects, along with an increase in the levels of THMs, only observed in the latest category of education.
In the USACS-CPS-II study, no association was found between PM2.5 and total and cardiopulmonary mortality for subjects in the highest category of education (>high school), while there was an association in less educated subjects [ 2].
Exclusion criteria were multiple trauma, concussion of the brain, pathological fractures, surgery occurring later than 72 hours after admission, aphasia, blindness, deafness and fewer than 9 years of formal education (the latter because of validity concerns of the MMSE with lesser educated subjects [ 23]).
Obesity rates increased with time in all educational groups, while overweight levels increased mostly if not exclusively in the better educated subjects (Table 3).
The association between dental anxiety and educational level was unstable across time, with the frequency of dental anxiety being highest and lowest among subjects with higher education in 1997 and 2007, respectively and indicating a decrease among the higher educated subjects only, from 21.0% in 1997 to 13.0% in 2007.
