Background: The increasing health problem of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection has only recently attracted the attention of psychosocial research, especially among subjects at higher risk (e.g. intravenous drug users; IDUs). The aim of the present study was to compare emotional stress symptoms, psychosocial variables (i.e. social support, external locus of control and emotional repression) and coping strategies in HCV-seropositive, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-seropositive and HCV/HIV-noninfected IDUs. Methods: IDUs followed by the Infectious Diseases Outpatient clinic were enrolled in the study over a period of 1 year. HCV-positive (n = 62) and HIV-positive (n = 76) IDUs and HCV/HIV-seronegative IDUs (n = 152) completed the Brief Symptom Inventory, the Social Provision Scale, the Locus of Control scale and the affective inhibition scale of the Illness Behavior Questionnaire. Coping with illness among HCV-positive and HIV-positive subjects was assessed through a modified version of the Mental Adjustment to Cancer Scale. Results: No significant differences were found between the samples with respect to individual and interpersonal variables. HCV-positive subjects showed higher scores on several psychological stress dimensions (i.e. obsessive-compulsive, phobic anxiety, paranoid ideation, psychoticism) and lower scores on fighting spirit, hopelessness and anxious preoccupation towards illness than HIV-positive patients. HCV-positive and HCV/HIV-seronegative IDUs reported comparable scores on most of the psychological measures. Conclusions: The findings indicate that routine assessment of psychosocial variables and coping mechanisms should be integrated into all HCV and HIV services, especially those dedicated to treatment of patients with substance abuse, as a vulnerable segment of the population at risk for life-threatening physical illness such as HCV and HIV infections.
SUMMARYDuodenal ulcer is a rather common disease, showing a clear family concentration. The aim of this work was to detect, in the etiology of this disease, possible genetic components, and to study their characteristics. The survey has been carried out by analyzing the data collected in 100 families, assembled by starting from a corresponding number of « index cases », and utilizing for comparison and also further analyzing the data by Doll and Buch (1950) and by Doll and Kelloch (1951). The " secondary cases " found, as a whole, were 109 (90 males and 19 females). The results may be summarized as follows:1) the frequency of the disease in the sibships, independently from sex and corrected for age, is of 32.5% ± 2.5;2) the frequency is, however, different in the two sexes. The estimate of this difference has been obtained calculating the relative risk (x) to contract the disease in the males, as compared to the females. Considering all the families together, such risk is x =5.8. However, x =16.7 in the 39 families with both healthy parents; x = 4.0 in the 45 families with the father affected; x = 2.9 in the families with the mother affected;3) though the analysis of segregation ratios would not allow, by itself, definitely excluding the hypothesis of a monofactorial recessive inheritance, many reasons lead to think of a possible case of « simulated mendelism »;4) the application of the methods of analysis proposed and worked out, in their theoretical basis, by Penrose (1953) and by Edwards (1960) for the genetic study of common diseases, makes much more probable the hypothesis that the genetic basis of duodenal ulcer is multifactorial. This does not exclude, however, that some particular environmental factors may increase the phenotypical correlation among the brothers — at least in the material under consideration.Therefore, the hypothesis now allowing the best interpretation of the observations is that duodenal ulcer could be controlled by a number of additive genes with a weak effect.
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