Attitudes and knowledge: middle-age and older Americans on home care.

Even though most middle-age and older Americans want to provide care for their frail and disabled relatives at home, many are ill-informed about home care in general or about the specific services available to make home care possible.

Effects of oral calcium carbonate on blood pressure in subjects with mildly elevated arterial pressure.

Recent investigations suggest that calcium supplementation may cause a lower arterial pressure in hypertensive individuals. We studied 32 patients with mildly elevated arterial pressure (diastolic pressure 88-95 mmHg) and inadequate dietary calcium intake (less than 750 mm/day), who were randomly assigned to placebo or 1500 mg/day elemental calcium for 4 weeks. Baseline and post-treatment urinary calcium concentrations and 3 biweekly supine blood pressures were recorded. Supine systolic blood pressure in the calcium group rose during the first 2 weeks of treatment (delta systolic blood pressure +5.9 mmHg; P less than 0.025) compared with no change in supine blood pressure for the placebo group. Within the calcium group, seven out of 15 patients had decreased or unchanged supine blood pressure during treatment. A lower urinary calcium concentration and a lower dietary sodium intake were found in this subgroup compared with those whose supine blood pressure increased with calcium administration.

The Master Questionnaire: preliminary report on an obesity assessment device.

Behavioral obesity researchers are increasingly concerned with thorough assessment of obesity. The present report describes the preliminary testing and refinement of the Master Questionnaire (MQ), a true-false scale developed expressly for use in obesity research. It was initially divided into four subscales: Spouse Support, Energy Balance Habits, Cognitive Factors, and Energy Balance Knowledge, and was intended for use as an outcome measure and as a predictor of change in obesity status. Its stability, internal consistency, sensitivity to treatment-related change, and predictive validity were examined. Test-retest reliability and sensitivity to treatment-related change were each found to be acceptable for three out of four subscales. Two subscales, Energy Balance Knowledge and Cognitive Factors, predicted outcome. The major weakness of the subscales was a lack of unidimensionality which would limit their utility. Cluster and factor analyses were used to develop five new subscales with acceptable levels of internal consistency. While some additional development and validation is still needed, the available evidence suggests that we have the nucleus of a strong assessment tool for obesity research.