Background: in Occidental languages, no widely accepted questionnaire is available which deals with health related quality of life from the specific point of view of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). Some psychometric tools of this kind are available in Chinese. One of them is the Chinese Quality of Life questionnaire (ChQoL). It comprises 50 items, subdivided in 3 Domains and 13 Facets. The ChQoL was built from scratch on the basis of TCM theory. It is therefore specifically valuable for the TCM practitioner. This paper describes our translation into Italian of the ChQoL, its first application to Occidental oncological patients, and some of its psychometric properties.
Methods: a translation scheme, originally inspired by the TRAPD procedure, is developed. This scheme focuses on comprehensibility and clinical usefulness more than on linguistic issues alone. The translated questionnaire is tested on a sample of 203 consecutive female patients with breast cancer. Shapiro-Wilk normality tests, Fligner-Killeen median tests, exploratory Two-step Cluster Analysis, and Tukey's test for non-additivity are applied to study the outcomes.
Results: an Italian translation is proposed. It retains the TCM characteristics of the original ChQoL, it is intelligible to Occidental patients who have no previous knowledge of TCM, and it is useful for daily clinical practice. The score distribution is not Normal, and there are floor and ceiling effects. A Visual Analogue Scale is identified as a suitable choice. A 3-point Likert scale can also efficiently describe the data pattern. The original scales show non-additivity, but an Anscombe-Tukey transformation with γ = 1.5 recovers additivity at the Domain level. Additivity is enhanced if different γ are adopted for different Facets, except in one case.
Conclusions: the translated questionnaire can be adopted both as a filing system based on TCM and as a source of outcomes for clinical trials. A Visual Analogue Scale is recommended, but a simpler 3-point Likert scale also suitably fits data. When estimating missing data, and when grouping items within Domain in order to build a summary Domain index, an Anscombe-Tukey transformation should be applied to the raw scores.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1477-7525-8-106 | DOI Listing |
Pediatr Pulmonol
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IRCCS Istituto Giannina Gaslini, Cystic Fibrosis Center, Genoa, Italy.
Background: Notwithstanding guidance from the European Cystic Fibrosis (CF) Society (ECFS) neonatal screening (NBS) working group, significant variation persists in the evaluation and management of Cystic Fibrosis Screen Positive, Inconclusive Diagnosis (CFSPID) subjects, leaving many aspects of care under debate. This study reports the results of a national survey investigating management and treatment approaches of pre-school CFSPIDs in Italy.
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Heliyon
January 2025
Department of Molecular Medicine, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy.
The 3p21.31 locus is the most robust genomic region associated with COVID-19 severity. This locus contains a main chemokine receptor (CKR) cluster.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCurr Neuropharmacol
January 2025
Department of Neurosciences 'Rita Levi Montalcini', University of Torino, Turin, Italy.
Introduction/objective: Data on long-term treatment with Esketamine Nasal Spray (ESKNS) in real-world patients with treatment resistant depression (TRD) is scarce. The primary aim of the study is to evaluate the effectiveness and tolerability of ESK-NS treatment at 6 and 12-month follow-ups.
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Alzheimers Res Ther
January 2025
Department of Neuroscience "Rita Levi Montalcini", University of Turin, Via Cherasco 15, Turin, 10126, Italy.
Background: Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder with both genetic and environmental factors contributing to its pathogenesis. While early-onset AD has well-established genetic determinants, the genetic basis for late-onset AD remains less clear. This study investigates a large Italian family with late-onset autosomal dominant AD, identifying a novel rare missense variant in GRIN2C gene associated with the disease, and evaluates the functional impact of this variant.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Vocal fatigue involves self-perceived vocal symptoms and reduced physiological capacity. This study aimed to adapt and validate the Vocal Fatigue Index (VFI), a tool originally designed to distinguish between patients with vocal fatigue and vocally healthy individuals, for Italian speakers.
Method: A four-step translation and validation process was employed.
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