[Nutritional risk in patients with pulmonary tuberculosis: the patient's or the health services' problem?]. / Riesgo nutricional en pacientes con tuberculosis pulmonar: cuestión del paciente o de los servicios de salud?

OBJECTIVE: To determine nutritional risk factors in a population of patients with pulmonary tuberculosis (PT). MATERIAL AND METHODS: During 1997, one-hundred and eighty-five patients with PT were chosen at random from two health institutions in Monterrey, Nuevo León, México. Variables analyzed were: anthropometric measures, socioeconomic status, utilization of the nutrition clinic, access to foodstuffs, adverse reactions to drugs, and disease attributable to malnutrition. Statistical analysis consisted of descriptive, bivariate, and multivariate logistic regression, in addition to prevalence ratios and 95% confidence intervals. RESULTS: The mean age was 42.4 +/- 19.9 years. The mean body mass index was 19.8 +/- 3.2; 57% of patients presented malnutrition; 26% of them were referred to the nutrition clinic, 24.3% of whom actually attended it. Multivariate analysis showed that adverse reactions of tuberculosis drugs were risk factors for malnutrition, independent of age, gender, education, occupation, year of diagnosis and access to foodstuffs, disease attributable, and utilization of the nutrition clinic. (chi 2 = 10.58; p = 0.051, R2 = 0.42). CONCLUSIONS: Nutritional risk in patients with pulmonary tuberculosis is both a patient and a health services issue. The high prevalence of malnutrition, the low utilization rate of nutritional services, and the effect of adverse reactions to therapeutic drugs, justify the need to focus attention on this particular group of patients.

Thixotropic behavior of a microcrystalline cellulose-sodium carboxymethylcellulose gel.

An extensive study has been made of the thixotropic behavior of a microcrystalline cellulose-sodium carboxymethylcellulose gel (2% weight) and of its modification due to physical factors such as agitation time, duration of storage at rest, and temperature. An empirical function, giving thixotropic area variation rate as a function of agitation time, was obtained and found to be practically independent of storage time.