Perceived health after kidney transplantation: a cross-sectional comparison of long-term and short-term cohorts.

Although increased longevity of grafts has led to a growing number of long-term kidney transplant recipients, knowledge about the perceived health of these patients remains limited. A cross-sectional sample of 609 patients (60% response) was stratified into a short-term (≤1 year), midterm (>1 and ≤8 years), and long-term cohort (>8 and ≤15 years posttransplantation). Cohorts were compared for perceived health (Visual Analogue Scale of the EQ-5D), number of symptoms, and number of comorbidities by analysis of variance/covariance and multivariate regression analyses. Long-term patients reported more symptoms, (F[2, 606] = 3.09, P = .046) and more comorbidities, (F[2, 588] = 4.75, P = .009) but similar levels of perceived health, (F[2, 550] = 2.37, P > .05). Furthermore, symptoms were less influential for perceived health among long- versus short-term (z = -2.08, P = .038) or midterm cohorts (z = -2.60, P = .009). Previously identified predictors of perceived health accounted for less variance in the long-term as opposed to short-term (z = 4.30, P < .001) and midterm cohort (z = 2.07, P = .039). Despite more symptoms and comorbidities, the perceived health of long-term kidney transplant recipients was comparable to the short- and midterm, possibly due to selective survival or patient adjustment. Because kidney function and symptoms were predominantly associated with short-term perceived health, there is an urgent need to identify variables associated with long-term perceived health.

The construction of the SEDAS: a new suicide-attitude questionnaire.

OBJECTIVE: Only two scales exist for measuring attitudes towards suicidal behaviour. Because of theoretical and methodological limitations of both scales, the SEDAS was constructed to offer an alternative instrument. METHOD: The semantic differential scale, from which the SEDAS was devised, consisted of 36 items (pairs of adjectives) constructed to measure attitudes towards suicidal behaviour of different actors in various situations. It was administered to 142 Dutch SOS-telephone volunteers for seven different actor/situation sets. RESULTS: Item analysis reduced the number of suitable items to 15. Simultaneous component analysis revealed two dimensions on which the actor/situation sets were scored: health/illness and acceptance/rejection, jointly accounting for 47% of variance. Psychometrics of the instrument in terms of internal consistency (values between 0.70 and 0.86), item-rest correlation and test-retest correlation (between 0.63 and 0.87) are acceptable to good. CONCLUSION: The SEDAS may be of value in population surveys, and facilitate effect evaluation of staff training and suicide prevention programmes.

Estradiol-induced conditioned taste aversion and place aversion in rats: sex- and dose-dependent effects.

Effects of various doses (0-250 micrograms/kg, SC) of estradiol-17 beta (E2) in a two-bottle choice conditioned taste aversion and a two-compartment conditioned place preference procedure were studied in male and female rats. Dose-dependent taste aversion and place aversion effects of E2 were established, and the conditioned taste aversion procedure was found to be more sensitive in detecting aversive properties of E2 than the conditioned place preference procedure. Although aversive properties of E2 were found in both sexes, the effects were clearly more prominent in males as compared to females. From this study, it was concluded that E2 acts as an unconditioned aversive stimulus in both male and female rats capable of gaining control over different types of behavior by associative learning.