Objective:to derive psychometric indicators of construct validity and internal consistence
of the Zarit Burden Interview scale for caregivers, describing associations of the
scale with metrics related to care demands, coping strategies and depression in
aged caregivers. Method:crosscutting descriptive and correlational study. The convenience sample was
composed by a hundred and twenty one senior caregivers (Avg=70.5 ± 7.2 years, 73%
women). They answered a questionnaire to check the physical and cognitive demands
of care, the Zarit Burden Interview (ZBI), the California Inventory of Coping
Strategies and the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS-15). Results:ZBI showed good internal consistency and also for the three factors emerging from
factor analysis, explaining 44% of variability. ZBI is positively related with
objective care demands (p < 0.001), depression (p = 0.006) and use of
dysfunctional coping strategies (p = 0.0007). Conclusion:ZBI is of interest to be applied to aged caregivers and the association of higher
degrees of burden, dysfunctional coping and depression show a vulnerability
scenario that may affect to older people taking care of other elderly.
Combined multimodal nonlinear optical (NLO) microscopies were used to detect and quantify morphological changes associated with stroma and epithelial transformation in colon cancer. Our findings provide complementary information about tissue microstructure, displaying distinctive patterns between normal and malignant human colon. Additionally, we have demonstrated the usefulness of using fixed tissues for the disease diagnostic and prognostic. The present work provides a framework for using NLO techniques as a clinical diagnostic tool for human colon cancer. NLO metrics could be applied to other disorders, which are characterized by abnormal cell proliferation and collagen assembly.
Murine induced colon cancer has been used to demonstrate that Second Harmonic Generation (SHG) microscopy images, combined with Two-Photon Excitation Fluorescence (TPEF) and specific quantization scoring methods allow distinguishing early alterations in colon mucosa. TPEF was used only to identified crypts and submucosa regions, whereas the image analysis was used to get quantitative data (Integrated Intensity and Aspect Ratio scoring) of different cancer stages. The submucosa amount of collagen fibers was significant and their orientation suffering proportional changes with the development of the pathological processes. Both after the fourth and eighth weeks after colon cancer induction, integrated intensity and aspect ratio values have shown significant statistical differences compared with control samples. Thus, SHG microscopy has proved to be a useful quantitative tool to highlight early changes of submucosa and the progression of these through the cancer development.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.