[The consumption of drugs and natural remedies in the older population of a rural area]. / Consumo de medicamentos y remedios naturales en la población anciana de un área rural.

OBJECTIVES: To evaluate the knowledge about medical treatment on people with more than 70 years old, specifically, the understanding, reason for prescription and dosage. To describe the use of natural remedies in the rural environment. To correlate the medication and the natural remedies consumption with health's self-perception. DESIGN: Cross-sectional study. SETTING: Health Center of Santa Eugènia de Berga. Barcelona. PATIENTS: Covered people aged 70 or more, not in an institution, selected by systematic sampling obtained from an updated age and sex register. MEASUREMENTS: A standard questionnaire was used, gathering aspects about medicine and natural remedies consumption and health's self-perception. RESULTS: The average of medicines was 3.08 (SD 2.5) for person. Therapeutics groups most prevalent were cardiovascular and nervous system drugs. The patients remembered correctly the reason of the prescription of the 77% of the medicines and the dosage of the 85%. The 25% of patients needed assistance of some family for to take the medication. We have found statistical significance between health's self-perception and the number of consumed drugs. The 47% of aged population used natural remedies. CONCLUSIONS: The knowledge of medical treatment of our elderly people is satisfactory. We detect in our study a high rate of polymedication. It is necessary, if possible, to rationalize and to reduce the number of drugs. It is useful to revise and to update periodically the elderly people medication. The natural remedies is included on the people's pharmacology and its use is important.

Immunologic impairment in patients with non-lymphoid cancer: correlation with the tumoral stage, response to treatment and survival.

The cellular immunity has been studied in 121 patients by solid nonlymphoid tumors, and in 50 healthy patients, 11 with benign tumors, with the use of techniques of in vivo dinitrochlorobenzene (DNCB) and in vitro lymphocyte response to phytohemagglutinin to observe the correlation between both tests and the clinical stage of the disease, the response to chemotherapy and surgery, prognosis, and survival. Patients with anergy presented tumoral irresectability, lack of response to chemotherapy, advanced disease, and limited survival. In the patients with good immune response, the disease was limited, responding with greater frequency to therapy and presenting a higher rate of survival. Consequently, the immunologic study of a neoplastic patient can guide us toward a therapeutic behavior and a prognosis.