Five-year stability in associations of health-related quality of life measures in community-dwelling older adults: the Rancho Bernardo Study

Ó The Author(s) 2010. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com Objective This study examines the five-year stability of the association of SF-12 and SF-6D scores with scores on the longer SF-36 and its domains in community-dwelling older men and women. Methods Participants were 653 men and 917 women aged 50 and older who completed mailed surveys of HRQOL (1995, 2000). SF-36 physical (PCS) and mental (MCS) component scores, domain scores; SF-12 PCS and MCS scores; and SF-6D scores were computed. Results Average age in 1995 was 68.2 ± 10.7 for men and 69.8 ± 11.3 for women. In 1995 and 2000, men had significantly higher scores on all measures (P’s \ 0.001). All three authors have contributed to the conception and design of the work and data analysis plan, interpretation of the data, and preparing the manuscript for publication. The second and third authors were in charge of the acquisition of subjects. The first author conducted the data analysis and wrote the first draft which was revised by the second and third authors. All authors were involved with the data in a manner substantial enough to take public responsibility for it. All authors believe the manuscript represents valid work and have reviewed the final version of the manuscript and approve of it for publication

Fatigue is associated with excess mortality in the general population: results from the EPIC-Norfolk study.

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.BACKGROUND: Significant fatigue is a frequent reason for seeking medical advice in the general population. Patients, however, commonly feel their complaint is ignored. This situation may be because clinicians perceive fatigue to be benign, unrelated to traditional biomedical outcomes such as premature mortality. The present study aimed to investigate whether an association between significant fatigue and mortality actually exists, and, if so, to identify potential mechanisms of this association. METHODS: A population-based cohort of 18,101 men and women aged 40-79 years who completed a measure of fatigue (Short Form 36 vitality domain, SF36-VT) in addition to providing information on possible confounding factors (age, sex, body mass index, marital status, smoking, education level, alcohol consumption, social class, depression, bodily pain, diabetes, use of β blockers, physical activity and diet) and mechanisms (haemoglobin, C-reactive protein and thyroid function) were followed up prospectively for up to 20 years. Mortality from all causes, cancer and cardiovascular disease was ascertained using death certification linkage with the UK Office of National Statistics. RESULTS: During 300,322 person years of follow-up (mean 16.6 years), 4397 deaths occurred. After adjusting for confounders, the hazard ratio (HR) for all-cause mortality was 1.40 (95 % confidence interval [CI] 1.25-1.56) for those reporting the highest fatigue (bottom SF36-VT quartile) compared with those reporting the lowest fatigue (top SF36-VT quartile). This significant association was specifically observed for those deaths related to cardiovascular disease (HR 1.45, 95 % CI 1.18-1.78) but not cancer (HR 1.09, 95 % CI 0.90-1.32). Of the considered mechanisms, thyroid function was most notable for attenuating this association. The risk of all-cause mortality, however, remained significant even after considering all putative confounders and mechanisms (HR 1.26, 95 % CI 1.10-1.45). CONCLUSIONS: High levels of fatigue are associated with excess mortality in the general population. This commonly dismissed symptom demands greater evaluation and should not automatically be considered benign.This work was supported by programme grants from the Medical Research Council G1000143 and the Cancer Research UK 8257

Corruption, rentier states and economic growth: Where do the GCC Countries stand?

Countries with vast natural resources usually display low economic outcomes and corruption is always considered as a main economic hinderer in this regard. We consider in this study the Gulf Cooperation Countries as endowed with huge natural resources while considering the potential role of corruption on their economic growth. We first theoretically discuss both the cursing and the blessing effect of natural resources on countries’ economic outcomes. The empirical analysis employed the panel GMM approach to explore whether and how the investment channel and the political stability channel can contribute to explaining the link between corruption and economic growth. Estimation outcomes show that overall corruption negatively impacts economic growth. Given that usually, corruption occurs through the interaction of the business with the public sector, regulatory authorities, as well as policymakers should spend their efforts to improve the transparency of communication between firms and public entities and officials. The result is expected to reduce their discretionary power, as well as the expected gains from corruption. Overall, these countries need to adopt certain institutional reforms, leading to higher accountability, the strength of property rights, and better bureaucratic quality.N/