Reliability and validity of the Chinese version of the new fear of hypoglycemia scale: FH-15.

OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to evaluate the reliability and validity of the Chinese version of the Fear of Hypoglycemia scale with 15 items (FH-15). METHODS: After obtaining the original author's authorization, the English version of the FH-15 scale was translated, back translated, and culturally debugged to obtain the Chinese version of FH-15. A convenient sampling method was used to extract patients with type 2 diabetes from four tertiary hospitals in Tianjin. A total of 408 patients with type 2 diabetes were investigated in the hospital to test the reliability and validity of Chinese version FH-15 scale. RESULTS: The content validity index of the scale was 0.92, and the content validity index of each item was 0.8-1.0. The exploratory factor analysis extracted three common factors (fear, avoidance, and interference), which contained 15 items, and the cumulative variance contribution rate was 71.245%. The confirmatory factor analysis results showed that the model fit was better at 1.981 χ 2/df, GFI = 0.901, CGI = 0.962, TLI = 0.952, and RMSEA = 0.070. The cut-off value for the total hypoglycemia fear scale was 30.5. The Cronbach's α coefficient of the three dimensions of the scale was 0.918, the Cronbach's α coefficient of each dimension is 0.876-0.916, the test-retest reliability was 0.903, and the test-retest reliability of each factor was 0.733-0.930. CONCLUSION: The Chinese version of the FH-15 scale can be considered reliable and valid. The item expression is concise, clear, and easy to understand. It is suitable for clinical practice as an initial screening tool to identify and evaluate the severity of fear of hypoglycemia in patients with type 2 diabetes.

[Influence on 5-fluorouracil metabolism by combination of interferon-alpha and 5-fluorouracil against human hepatocellular carcinoma xenografts].

To investigate the effect of biochemical modulation on antitumor activity shown by the combination of 5-Fluorouracil (5-FU) and interferon-alpha (IFN-alpha), experimental therapy was performed on human hepatocellular carcinoma cell (HuH7, PLC/PLF/5) xenografts inoculated into nude mice, using 5-FU and IFN-alpha, either alone or in combination. These agents showed antitumor activity in different degrees. Although IFN-alpha, given as 100,000 units/mouse/3 times/week subcutaneously x 6, and 5-FU, given as 0.5 mg/mouse/3 times/week intraperitoneally, showed addititive antitumor effect against HuH7 and PLC/PLF/5, the activities of thymidylate synthase (TS), dihydropyrimidine dehydrogenase (DPD), thymidine phosphorylase (TP), orotate phosphoribosyltransferase (OPRT), uridine phosphorylase (UP) and uridine kinase (UK) were not significantly influenced in the tumors treated with the 5-FU/IFN-alpha combination, compared with those treated with 5-FU or IFN-alpha alone. This suggested that antitumor activity of 5-FU and IFN-alpha in combination was not significantly involved in 5-FU metabolism in two human hepatocellular carcinoma cell lines examined.