Cell phone-based health education messaging improves health literacy.

BACKGROUND: The ubiquity of cell phones, which allow for short message service (SMS), provides new and innovative opportunities for disease prevention and health education. OBJECTIVE: To explore the use of cell phone-based health education SMS to improve the health literacy of community residents in China. METHODS: A multi-stage random sampling method was used to select representative study communities and participants ≥ 18 years old. Intervention participants were sent health education SMSs once a week for 1 year and controls were sent conventional, basic health education measures. Health literacy levels of the residents before and after the intervention were evaluated between intervention and control groups. RESULTS: Public health literacy scores increased 1.5 points, from 61.8 to 63.3, after SMS intervention for 1 year (P<0.01); the increase was greater for males than females (2.01 vs. 1.03; P<0.01) and for Shenzhen local residents than non-permanent residents (2.56 vs. 1.14; P<0.01). The frequency of high health literacy scores was greater for the intervention than control group (22.03% to 30.93% vs. 22.07% to 20.82%). With health literacy as a cost-effective index, the cost-effectiveness per intervention was 0.54. CONCLUSION: SMS may be a useful tool for improving health literacy.

Effect of Helicobacter pylori infection on gastric mucosal pathologic change and level of nitric oxide and nitric oxide synthase.

AIM: To investigate the level of nitric oxide (NO) and nitrous oxide synthase (NOS) enzyme and its effect on gastric mucosal pathologic change in patients infected with Helicobacter pylori (H pylori), and to study the pathogenic mechanism of H pylori. METHODS: The mucosal tissues of gastric antrum were taken by endoscopy, then their pathology, H pylori and anti-CagA-IgG were determined. Fifty H pylori positive cases and 35 H pylori negative cases were randomly chosen. Serum level of NO and NOS was detected. RESULTS: One hundred and seven cases (71.33%) were anti-CagA-IgG positive in 150 H pylori positive cases. The positive rate was higher especially in those with pre-neoplastic diseases, such as atrophy, intestinal metaplasia and dysplasia. The level of NO and NOS in positive group was higher than that in negative group, and apparently lower in active gastritis than in pre-neoplastic diseases such as atrophy, intestinal metaplasia and dysplasia. CONCLUSION: H pylori is closely related with chronic gastric diseases, and type I H pylori may be the real factor for H pylori-related gastric diseases. Infection with H pylori can induce elevation of NOS, which produces NO.