Determinants of health-related quality of life among homeless individuals during the COVID-19 pandemic.

OBJECTIVE: To clarify which variables are associated with the health-related quality of life (HRQoL) among homeless individuals during the COVID-19 pandemic. STUDY DESIGN: Cross-sectional research. METHODS: Data were taken from the Hamburg survey of homeless individuals (n = 151). HRQoL was assessed using the EQ-5D tool. More precisely, the EQ-5D-5L questionnaire was used to quantify problems in five health dimensions (i.e. mobility, self-care, usually activities, pain/discomfort, anxiety/depression), and its visual analog scale (EQ-VAS) was used to record the according self-rated health status. Explanatory variables include sex, age, education, marital status, country of origin, health insurance, and chronic alcohol consumption. RESULTS: With regard to HRQoL, most frequently, problems were reported as pain/discomfort (47.3%), followed by anxiety/depression (32.4%), mobility (29.7%), usual activities (20.7%) and self-care (4.6%). The mean EQ-VAS score was 75.34 (SD 22.23; range 1-100), and the mean EQ-5D-5L index was 0.84 (SD 0.23; range 0.32-1). Regressions showed increasing problems in mobility and self-care with higher age, whereas EQ-VAS was positively associated with younger age. Furthermore, EQ-5D-5L index was positively associated with younger age and higher education. Summarized, among this cohort, a higher age is associated with a lower HRQoL. CONCLUSION: Remarkably high EQ-VAS values and rather few problems in the five dimensions investigated here were reported among the homeless individuals during the COVID-19 pandemic particularly compared with the general population. Moreover, study findings particularly stress the link between higher age and lower HRQoL among homeless individuals. This knowledge is important to address homeless individuals at risk of poor HRQoL. Longitudinal studies are required to confirm the given findings.

Gels from surfactant solutions with densely packed multilamellar vesicles.

Results on surfactant gels containing densely packed multilamellar vesicles are reported. The gels form spontaneously when the bilayers of L alpha or L3 phases of alkyldimethylaminoxide and cosurfactant are charged up by the addition of ionic surfactant or HCl. The rheological behaviour on addition of excess salt was studied by dynamic rheological measurements for systems with surfactants of different chainlengths. Both the storage modulus, G', and the yield stress, sigma y, decay with rising salinity. This effect is caused by the reduction of both the electrical contribution of the bending constants of the bilayers and the compression modulus of the vesicles. The influence of the charge density on the rheological properties was determined. G' and sigma y increase with charge density and reach a plateau that depends on the chainlength of the surfactant. Measurements on samples prepared with waterglycerol mixtures show that the moduli and the yield stress value are independent of the solvent viscosity. Photographs of the surfactant gels that were taken with the interference contrast microscopy technique are presented. They reveal that some of the vesicles are much bigger than expected on the basis of TEM micrographs. The mean size of the vesicles can be estimated on basis of conductivity data. This method yields an average number of 5-6 shells per vesicle and corresponds with the value taken from the electron micrograph. The rheological data are explained with a model that was recently introduced by van der Linden. In connection with a model due to Lekkerkerker for the electric contribution of the bending constant of the bilayers and our own calculations of the osmotic pressure the van der Linden formula yields good results for describing the experimental data.