Feminity/masculinity and disordered eating in women: How are they related?

Issues around femininity and masculinity have been implicated as etiological variables in the development of eating disorders among women. However, previous research on this subject has produced inconsistent results. This study examined the hypothesis that this inconsistency is due partially to incomplete conceptualizations of sex role orientation. Three aspects of the current female sex role stereotype were considered to be related to symptoms of eating disorders: importance of physical appearance, importance of masculine and feminine traits, and the number of roles a woman considers central to her identity. A non-clinical sample of 45 female undergraduates completed a battery of questionnaires. Results showed no relationship between a standard measure of femininity (the PAQ) and disordered eating. However, importance of appearance was related to both femininity and disordered eating. Furthermore, placing greater importance on possessing socially desirable masculine traits was a significant predictor of disordered eating. Finally, subjects who felt that many roles rather than few roles were central to their sense of self obtained high scores on a measure of disordered eating. These findings are discussed in light of the “superwoman” image and disordered eating, and arguments are made for the development of more complete conceptualizations of masculinity and femininity.     

Parental control over feeding and children's fruit and vegetable intake: how are they related?

OBJECTIVES: To replicate the finding of a negative association between parental control and fruit and vegetable consumption in girls. To extend the investigation to boys and examine sex differences. To test the hypothesis that children's food neophobia explains this association. DESIGN: Cross-sectional questionnaire survey. MEASURES: The questionnaire included items assessing parents' and children's fruit and vegetable intake, the Parental Control Index, and the Child Food Neophobia Scale. SUBJECTS: Parents of 564 2- to 6-year-old children, recruited from 22 London nursery schools. STATISTICAL ANALYSIS: Relationships between continuous variables were examined with Pearson product moment correlation coefficients. Sex differences were tested using independent sample t tests, and sex differences in correlations were assessed from their 95% confidence intervals. Parental control and children's food neophobia were entered into a hierarchical multiple regression to test the hypothesis that neophobia explains the association between parental control and children's fruit and vegetable intake. RESULTS: We replicated the finding that parental control was correlated with children's fruit and vegetable consumption and found no significant sex differences. Parental fruit and vegetable consumption and children's food neophobia were also strong predictors of children's fruit and vegetable consumption, and both were associated with parental control, suggesting that they might explain the association between control and intake. Controlling for children's food neophobia and parental intake reduced the association of parental control with children's fruit and vegetable intake to nonsignificance. CONCLUSIONS: These findings emphasize the importance of systematic research about associations between parental feeding styles and children's dietary habits so that dietetics professionals can give parents sound advice.     

HIV and STDS: how are they linked?

The 153-327 million new cases of treatable sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) each year are a critical health problem and are increasingly associated with transmission of HIV infections. There is strong epidemiological evidence that STDs (especially HIV-1 and genital ulcer diseases such as syphilis, herpes, and chancroid) increase a person's ability to transmit or acquire an HIV infection. In addition, HIV may alter the clinical presentation, natural history, diagnosis, and responsiveness to therapy of STDs; and STDs may alter the natural history of HIV infection by inducing immunosuppression, by chronic immune stimulation, or by direct viral interactions. Most reports on HIV infection and syphilis document neurological manifestation of syphilis in HIV-1 infected individuals. HIV-1 may modify an individual's response to syphilis infection, producing more persistent and higher RPR titres, increasing the likelihood of losing reactivity to treponemal tests correlating with advanced HIV disease, and increasing biological false-positive reactions. HIV also appears to reduce the responsiveness of chancroid to standard therapy, especially single-dose therapy, thus requiring multiple-dose therapy over 5-7 days. Herpes simplex viral infections are more frequent and severe in HIV-infected individuals, but dosage adjusted acyclovir therapy is effective in most patients. Gonorrhea does not appear to be affected by the presence of HIV infection, except that HIV-infected women may be more susceptible to cervical gonococcal infection and pelvic inflammatory disease. The clinical presentation of human papilloma virus, however, is altered by HIV infection as is the rate of recurrence and the responsiveness to standard therapy. Because of the recognition of the interaction of HIV and STDs, STD control is now recognized as an essential component of HIV prevention programs. Parallel prevention campaigns, such as condom promotion, could reduce both.     

HIV and STDs: how are they linked?

I write in response to Dr. Gina Dallabeta's article with this title (HIV and STDs: How Are They Linked?). Prospective studies in sub-Saharan Africa have established the following: 1. Seropositive commercial sex workers have a higher prevalence of genital ulcer disease (GUD) and positive serology for syphilis. 2. Seropositive men with chancroid more frequently have a history of prior GUD. 3. Seronegative men with a history of recent contact with a commercial sex worker are more likely to seroconvert if they have GUD than urethritis. GUD increases the infectiousness of HIV. Similarly, there is increased susceptibility to the virus in cases of genital chlamydial infection and Trichomonas vaginalis. The mechanisms are basically two--mechanical and biological. Mechanically, the raw area resulting from the STD provides a portal of entry for the virus. Biologically, activated lymphocytes and macrophages enhance HIV shedding and increase the susceptibility of the individual to HIV.     

Medicare beneficiary counseling programs: what are they and do they work?

Medicare beneficiaries face myriad rules, conditions, and exceptions under the Medicare program. As a result, State Information, Counseling, and Assistance (ICA) programs were established or enhanced with Federal funding as part of the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (OBRA) of 1990. ICA programs utilize a volunteer-based and locally-sponsored support system to deliver free and unbiased counseling on the Medicare program and related health insurance issues. This article discusses the effectiveness of the ICA model. Because the ICA programs serve as a vital link between HCFA and its beneficiaries, information about the programs' success may be useful to HCFA and other policymakers during this era of consumer information.     

Cardiovascular responses to clonidine in alcohol withdrawal: are they related to psychopathology and mental well-being?

The possible relationships between alpha-2-adrenoceptor function, as assessed by blood pressure, heart rate, and sedative responses to clonidine (CLON; 1.5 microg/kg, i.v.), and psychopathology and mental well-being were investigated in 19 patients with alcohol-dependence in the early withdrawal period (days 1 and 7). An age-matched control group was used (n=17). CLON-induced maximum reduction of systolic blood pressure was less day 1 in the alcohol-dependent patients compared to controls. CLON was found to induce less sedation at day 7 compared to day 1 and to controls. No relationships were seen between the parameters for alpha-2-adrenoceptor function and psychopathology and mental well-being. These findings suggest that CLON-induced changes in blood pressures and heart rate reflect the cardiovascular situation in alcohol withdrawal and not aspects of behavior.     

Obesity,binge eating and psychopathology: Are they related?

Obese female subjects with binge eating disorder BED; (N = 107) completed the Beck Depression Inventory, Symptom Checklist-90, Inventory of Interpersonal Problems, and Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale. Subjects were divided into moderate or severe binger on the basis of scores on the Binge Eating Scale, and grouped into moderately or severely obese by performing a median split on their weights. Spearman correlational analyses were performed to determine the relationship between psychopathol-ogy and obesity and psychopathology and binge eating. Analyses of variance (ANO-VAs) were then performed using scores on the psychological measures with subjects grouped both by severity of obesity and severity of binge eating. The results indicated that in our sample, obesity and scores on the measures of psychiatric symptomatology were unrelated. However, a significant positive relationship was found between binge eating severity and degree of psychiatric symptomatology. We suggest that binge eating may account for the observed relationship between obesity and psychopathology reported in previous studies. We discuss the importance of assessing BED when conducting research with obese individuals. © 1994 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Funding source,trial outcome and reporting quality: are they related? Results of a pilot study

Background  

There has been increasing concern regarding the potential effects of the commercialization of research.     

Cellular phones: are they detrimental?

The issue of possible health effects of cellular phones is very much alive in the public's mind where the rapid increase in the number of the users of cell phones in the last decade has increased the exposure of people to the electromagnetic fields (EMFs). Health consequences of long term use of mobile phones are not known in detail but available data indicates the development of non specific annoying symptoms on acute exposure to mobile phone radiations. In an attempt to determine the prevalence of such cell phones associated health manifestations and the factors affecting their occurrence, a cross sectional study was conducted in five randomly selected faculties of Alexandria University. Where, 300 individuals including teaching staff, students and literate employee were equally allocated and randomly selected among the five faculties. Data about mobile phone's users and their medical history, their pattern of mobile usage and the possible deleterious health manifestations associated with cellular phone use was collected. The results revealed 68% prevalence of mobile phone usage, nearly three quarters of them (72.5%) were complainers of the health manifestations. They suffered from headache (43%), earache (38.3%), sense of fatigue (31.6%), sleep disturbance (29.5%), concentration difficulty (28.5%) and face burning sensation (19.2%). Both univariate and multivariate analysis were consistent in their findings. Symptomatic users were found to have significantly higher frequency of calls/day, longer call duration and longer total duration of mobile phone usage/day than non symptomatic users. For headache both call duration and frequency of calls/day were the significant predicting factors for its occurrence (chi2 = 18.208, p = 0.0001). For earache, in addition to call duration, the longer period of owning the mobile phone were significant predictors (chi2 = 16.996, p = 0.0002). Sense of fatigue was significantly affected by both call duration and age of the user (chi2 = 24.214, p = 0.0000), while burning sensation was only affected by frequency of calls/day (chi2 = 5.360, p = 0.020). According to the 95% confidence interval of frequency and duration of calls, the study recommended not to increase the call duration more than four minutes and limit their frequency to less than seven calls/day with total duration of exposure less than 22 min./day.     

Health care expenditure and GDP: are they broken stationary?

In this paper, we analyse the stationarity of the real per capita health care expenditure (HCE) and real per capita GDP for a sample of OECD countries, allowing for the presence of multiple structural breaks. One novelty of the paper is that it permits the presence of structural breaks that affect both the level and the slope of the time series. After the cross-section dependence is accounted for, we have found that these variables can be characterised as stationary processes evolving around a broken trend.     

Friction and impact surfaces: are they lead-based paint hazards?

Professionals who identify residential lead-based paint hazards and develop lead hazard control plans are instructed to assess painted friction and impact surfaces in homes as potentially active sources of dust lead, a known exposure vector for young children. However, empirical tests of the importance of these surfaces had not been conducted. Using data collected as part of a 1998 three-community study of the Housing and Urban Development Lead Risk Assessment protocols, this article explores how much rubbing or binding on friction and impact surfaces on windows and doors influence dust lead levels on windowsills and floors, while taking into account paint condition on these surfaces and other sources of lead. The analyses included windowsill dust wipe samples from 611 rooms in 182 homes and 782 floor dust wipe samples collected in 209 rooms from 104 homes. The study found that when the paint on windows is intact but the window is rubbing or binding, the dust lead levels on the windowsills are significantly higher than on windows with intact paint without rubbing or binding, after controlling for other lead sources. Windowsill dust lead on a window with intact lead-based paint at 1 mg/cm(2) and no rubbing/binding would be 27% lower than on a window with nonintact paint, rubbing/binding surfaces, or both of these conditions. An independent effect of rubbing/binding of doors on floor dust lead loadings was not observed. These findings support federal regulations calling for lead risk assessors to check the friction/impact surfaces at windows when dust lead samples taken below them are elevated, but these analyses did not offer support for taking extra observations of friction/impact surfaces around doors.