Acceptance of Love and Remarriage Among Older Adults in the Philippines.

Objectives: Later-life re-partnership has been linked to healthy aging, but little is known about Philippine older adults' perception of love and remarriage in older age. Methods: Using two nationally representative surveys on aging in the Philippines, we estimated the proportion of older adults reporting acceptance. Using weighted logistic regression, we assessed sociodemographic and health factors associated with acceptance as well as the relationship of this acceptance with social activity and health behaviors. Results: Only seventeen percent of respondents reported acceptance. Per multivariable analyses, unmarried men and married women reported acceptance, and acceptance was associated with increased social activity and smoking in men, less smoking in women, and more drinking in both genders. Discussion: Most older adults in the Philippines reported love and remarriage in old age as unacceptable. Through these results, we can understand how attitudes toward later-life relationship impact older adults' health and well-being.

BCL9 and C9orf5 are associated with negative symptoms in schizophrenia: meta-analysis of two genome-wide association studies.

Schizophrenia is a chronic and debilitating psychiatric condition affecting slightly more than 1% of the population worldwide and it is a multifactorial disorder with a high degree of heritability (80%) based on family and twin studies. Increasing lines of evidence suggest intermediate phenotypes/endophenotypes are more associated with causes of the disease and are less genetically complex than the broader disease spectrum. Negative symptoms in schizophrenia are attractive intermediate phenotypes based on their clinical and treatment response features. Therefore, our objective was to identify genetic variants underlying the negative symptoms of schizophrenia by analyzing two genome-wide association (GWA) data sets consisting of a total of 1,774 European-American patients and 2,726 controls. Logistic regression analysis of negative symptoms as a binary trait (adjusted for age and sex) was performed using PLINK. For meta-analysis of two datasets, the fixed-effect model in PLINK was applied. Through meta-analysis we identified 25 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with negative symptoms with p<5×10(-5). Especially we detected five SNPs in the first two genes/loci strongly associated with negative symptoms of schizophrenia (P(meta-analysis)<6.22×10(-6)), which included three SNPs in the BCL9 gene: rs583583 showed the strongest association at a P(meta-analysis) of 6.00×10(-7) and two SNPs in the C9orf5 (the top SNP is rs643410 with a p = 1.29 ×10(-6)). Through meta-analysis, we identified several additional negative symptoms associated genes (ST3GAL1, RNF144, CTNNA3 and ZNF385D). This is the first report of the common variants influencing negative symptoms of schizophrenia. These results provide direct evidence of using of negative symptoms as an intermediate phenotype to dissect the complex genetics of schizophrenia. However, additional studies are warranted to examine the underlying mechanisms of these disease-associated SNPs in these genes.

Hallazgos ecocardiográficos en pacientes geriátricos con soplo sistólico / Echocardiographic findings in geriatric patients with systolic murmurs

Se realizó un estudio retrospectivo analizando los ecocardiogramas de 50 pacientes mayores de 60 años con soplo sistólico y se comparan con 50 pacientes entre 40-60 años en el Hospital Regional Universitario José María Cabral y Báez, Santiago, República Dominicana. Durante el período enero-agosto, 1991. Se evidencia una mayor probabilidad de tener alternaciones cardiológicas en los mayores de 60 años (3.5 veces más). El engrosamiento valvular y la dilatación de cavidad ocupan los hallazgos más frecuentes en los pacientes mayores de 60 años, aunque sin diferencia significativa respecto a los menores de 60 años. Encontrándose de significancia estadística el engrosamiento del septum, esclerosis valvular aórtica hipertrofia del ventrículo izquierdo y el engrosamiento de cavidad. Se concluye que también en los pacientes ancianos con soplo sistólico se debe realizar una evaluación del mismo, siendo el ecocardiograma el procedimiento más inocuo y menos agresivo. Ecocardiografía, soplo sistólico, cardiopatía, anciano, válvulas, cavidades, septum ventrículo