Quality of life in the older adults: The protective role of self-efficacy in adequate coping in patients with chronic diseases.

The purpose of the present study was to establish the association between self-efficacy, perception of disease, emotional regulation, and fatigue and the health-related quality of life in older adults living in the departments of Cesar and Atlántico in Colombia and who have been diagnosed with a chronic disease. The participants were 325 older adults of both sexes, with literacy and no presence of cognitive impairment in the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE); A non-probabilistic sampling was carried out. We used the MOS-SF-36 questionnaire, the Brief Illness Perception Questionnaire scale for measuring the perception of disease, the Stanford Patient Education Research Center's Chronic Disease Self self-efficacy questionnaire for chronic patients, the Difficulties in Emotional Regulation Scale, and the Fatigue Severity Questionnaire as measurement instruments. The design was non-experimental cross-sectional with a correlational scope. The results indicate that self-efficacy, disease perception, emotional regulation and severity of fatigue are variables that could impact the physical function of quality of life, confirming that self-efficacy would work as a factor that decreases the probability that a participant score low on this dimension of quality of life. On the other hand, both the perception of the disease and the severity of fatigue were identified as factors that probably negatively influence quality of life.

A small, new gerbil-mouse Eligmodontia (Rodentia: Cricetidae) from dunes at the coasts and deserts of north-central Chile: molecular, chromosomic, and morphological analyses.

A small, new species of gerbil rodents of the genus Eligmodontia from the southwestern dunes of the Atacama Desert in northern Chile is described; the genus had not been reported for this western lowland region. Our description is based on cytogenetic and molecular data, as well as cranial and external morphology. In order to support this hypothesis, we studied 27 specimens captured in Playa Los Choros (Coquimbo) and Copiapó (Atacama), comparing them with samples of all the extant species of the genus. Nineteen individuals consistently showed 2N=50, FN=48, with telocentric chromosomes and G-bands identical to those of the geographically northeastern E. hirtipes; these two groups were geographically separated by E. puerulus (2N = 34, FN = 48). The phylogenetic analysis of 56 Eligmodontia cytochrome-b gene sequences yielded a maximum-likelihood phylogenetic tree where the new species formed a divergent and well-supported clade within the genus, which was also confirmed by unweighted parsimony, minimum evolution, and Bayesian analyses. The new species has K2P genetic distances of 12.8% from the geographically distant E. hirtipes, and 10.3% from E. puerulus. Axes 1 and 2 of Principal Component Analysis based on 12 body and skull measurements clearly separated the new species, the latter having a smaller head+body length (70.6 +/- 3.4 mm, n = 17) and lower weight (11.9 +/- 1.9 g, n = 20). We provide strong evidence to recognize a distinct new western lineage within Eligmodontia genus, Eligmodontia dunaris sp. nov., for which we give a complete taxonomic description and a hypothetical biogeographic scenario. The new species should be considered endangered, due to its level of endemism, its low population numbers (which can be occasionally increased after a blooming desert) and its fragile dry habitat patchily distributed near the Atacama Desert.

Kidney mass and relative medullary thickness of rodents in relation to habitat, body size, and phylogeny.

We tested the hypotheses that relative medullary thickness (RMT) and kidney mass are positively related to habitat aridity in rodents, after controlling for correlations with body mass. Body mass, mass-corrected kidney mass, mass-corrected RMT, mass-corrected maximum urine concentration, and habitat (scored on a semiquantitative scale of 1-4 to indicate increasing aridity) all showed statistically significant phylogenetic signal. Body mass varied significantly among habitats, with the main difference being that aquatic species are larger than those from other habitats. Mass-corrected RMT and urine concentration showed a significant positive correlation (N=38; conventional r=0.649, phylogenetically independent contrasts [IC] r=0.685), thus validating RMT as a comparative index of urine concentrating ability. RMT scaled with body mass to an exponent significantly less than 0 (N=141 species; conventional allometric slope=-0.145 [95% confidence interval (CI)=-0.172, -0.117], IC allometric slope=-0.132 [95% CI=-0.180, -0.083]). Kidney mass scaled to an exponent significantly less than unity (N=104 species; conventional slope=0.809 [95% CI=0.751, 0.868], IC slope=0.773 [95% CI=0.676, 0.871]). Both conventional and phylogenetic analysis indicated that RMT varied among habitats, with rodents from arid areas having the largest values of RMT. A phylogenetic analysis indicated that mass-corrected kidney mass was positively related to habitat aridity.