Predictors of emotional intelligence among family caregivers of cancer patients: A cross-sectional study.

BACKGROUND: Family caregivers of cancer patients must have strong emotional intelligence skills essential for understanding one's and others' feelings and learning how to cope. OBJECTIVES: The present study aims to determine the predictive factors of emotional intelligence and its relationship with spiritual intelligence, coping, and knowledge and experience about pain among family caregivers of cancer patients in Iran. METHODS: A cross-sectional, descriptive study was conducted in 2020-2021. Two hundred twenty-six family caregivers of cancer patients participated in this study. The data collection tools were Wong and Law's emotional intelligence, King's spiritual intelligence, Brief Cope, and the family pain questionnaire. Following determining the variables' correlation, linear regression was carried out. RESULTS: Emotional intelligence had a significant correlation with age (r = 0.20, p = .003), academic degree (r = 0.15, p = .032), duration of care (r = 0.15, p = .032), and spiritual intelligence (r = 0.30, p < .001). The regression model accounted for 12.4% of the variance in emotional intelligence; age (ß = 0.16, p < .021) and spiritual intelligence (ß = 0.26, p < .001) were significant explanatory variables. CONCLUSIONS: Emotional intelligence is correlated with age, academic degree, duration of care, and spiritual intelligence, but only age and spiritual intelligence were found to be predictive factors for emotional intelligence in the family caregivers of cancer patients.

The development of a novel copper-loaded mesoporous silica nanoparticle as a peroxidase mimetic for colorimetric biosensing and its application in H2O2 and GSH assay.

In recent years, the development of nanomaterials-based peroxidase mimics as enzyme sensors has been attracting considerable interest due to their outstanding features, including potent stability, and cost-effectiveness toward natural enzymes. In this work, mesoporous silica nanoparticles functionalized by copper (Cu-MSN) were prepared as a new artificial enzyme for the first time through the sol-gel procedure. A comprehensive investigation of the catalytic activity of Cu-MSN was done through the oxidation of chromogenic peroxidase substrates, 3,3',5,5'-tetramethylbenzidine (TMB), and (2,2'-azino-bis (3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulfonic acid) diammonium salt (ABTS), in the presence of H2O2. The results indicate that the peroxidase-like activity of the as-prepared sample is significantly higher than other nanoparticles. Additionally, for the study, a facile and rapid sensing method based on the enzyme-like activity of Cu-MSN to detect H2O2 and glutathione (GSH) was developed to examine the potency of the proposed biosensor. Preliminary analysis revealed that the limit of detection (LOD) of H2O2 and GSH is 0.2 and 0.0126 µM, in the range of 0.9-100 and 0.042-1 µM, respectively. These findings support the claims for the efficiency of the sensor in detection fields. Also, human serum was utilized as the real sample to obtain additional evidence.