Rheumatology international
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The Arthritis Self-Efficacy Scale-8 (ASES-8) is a valid tool to measure patients' arthritis-specific self-efficacy. However, evidence about reliability and validity of the ASES-8 in Chinese arthritis patients is lacking. This study aimed to culturally adapt and test the psychometric properties of the Chinese version of the ASES-8. ⋯ Excellent test-retest reliability (ICC = 0.98) and internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha = 0.942) were demonstrated. The Chinese version of the ASES-8 had statistically acceptable levels of reliability and validity for assessing self-efficacy in patients with rheumatoid arthritis. This disease-specific scale is particularly valuable for use among patients with rheumatoid arthritis from the Chinese population.
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The Osteoarthritis Quality of Life scale (OAQoL) is specific to individuals with osteoarthritis. The present study describes the adaptation of the OAQoL for use in the following five European languages: German, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish and Turkish. The study involved three stages in each language; translation, cognitive debriefing (face and content validity) and validation. ⋯ Scores were also related, as expected, to perceived severity of osteoarthritis. The OAQoL was successfully adapted for use in Germany, Hungary, Italy, Spain and Turkey. The addition of these new language versions will prove valuable to multinational clinical trials and to clinical practice in the respective countries.
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The aim of the study was to measure the diagnostic values of biomarkers of bacterial infection in idiopathic inflammatory myopathy (IIM) patients. The serum and clinical data of 82 IIM patients with/without bacterial infection were collected. Concentrations of soluble urokinase plasminogen activator receptor (suPAR), soluble triggering receptor expressed on myeloid cells 1 (sTREM-1), procalcitonin (PCT) and C-reactive protein (CRP) were measured in IIM patients and healthy controls. ⋯ The inflammatory biomarkers suPAR, sTREM-1, PCT and CRP offer diagnostic accuracy in detecting bacterial infection in IIM patients. Particularly, suPAR is the most sensitive and specific biomarker to predict bacterial infection in IIM patients. Combination of suPAR and CRP serum levels provides an even better confirmation of bacterial infection.
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The role of the X-ray repair cross-complementing gene 1(XRCC1) Arg399Gln and Arg194Trp polymorphisms has been involved in the investigations of susceptibility to multiple autoimmune diseases, but the results were inconsistent. Here, we have performed a meta-analysis to clarify the relationship between them. All appropriate case-control studies were searched in the PubMed, EMBASE and Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) database. ⋯ Stratification by disease indicated significant association between XRCC1 Arg399Gln and rheumatoid arthritis (RA) in all genetic models (P < 0.05). However, there was no significant association between XRCC1 Arg194Trp polymorphism and autoimmune diseases in different genetic models. The current meta-analysis demonstrates that the XRCC1 Arg399Gln polymorphism confers susceptibility to autoimmune diseases in Asians and Caucasians and, in particular, shows that XRCC1 Arg399Gln polymorphism is associated with RA.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Functional status, physical activity level, and exercise regularity in patients with fibromyalgia after Multidisciplinary treatment: retrospective analysis of a randomized controlled trial.
Multidisciplinary treatments have shown to be effective for fibromyalgia. We report detailed functional outcomes of patients with fibromyalgia who attended a 3-month Multidisciplinary treatment program. The hypothesis was that patients would have increased functional status, physical activity level, and exercise regularity after attending this program. ⋯ In that group, steps/day showed more regularity, and the 6 MW results showed improvement of -33.00 (-59.8 to -8.25) m, and the differences from the Control group were statistically significant. The patients who underwent the Multidisciplinary treatment had improved functional status, physical activity level, and exercise regularity. The functional improvements were maintained 1 year after treatment completion.