Real-world data on herb-drug interactions in oncology: A scoping review of pharmacoepidemiological studies.

Background: The concurrent use of conventional drugs and herbal medicines is becoming popular among patients with cancer. However, the potential risk of herb-drug interactions (HDI) remains under-addressed in the literature. Previous reviews have mainly focused on the prevalence of interactions, with less attention paid to the methods used by pharmacoepidemiological studies on evaluating HDI.

Barriers and facilitators to promoting evidence uptake in Chinese medicine: a qualitative study in Hong Kong.

Background: In response to the World Health Organization's recommendation, policy makers have been adopting evidence-based healthcare approach to promote the development of traditional, complementary and integrative medicine (TCIM) into Hong Kong's health system. Disseminating synopses of clinical evidence from systematic reviews or randomized trials is regarded as a potentially effective strategy to promote evidence uptake. The study aimed to identify barriers and facilitators to implementing this strategy among Hong Kong Chinese medicine practitioners (CMPs).

Long-term association between urban air ventilation and mortality in Hong Kong.

While associations between population health outcomes and some urban design characteristics, such as green space, urban heat islands (UHI), and walkability, have been well studied, no prior studies have examined the association of urban air ventilation and health outcomes. This study used data from Hong Kong, a densely populated city, to explore the association between urban air ventilation and mortality during 2008-2014. Frontal area density (FAD), was used to measure urban ventilation, with higher FAD indicating poorer ventilation, due to structures blocking wind penetration.

Promoting community reintegration using narratives and skills building for young adults with stroke: a protocol for a randomised controlled trial.

Background: Stroke in adults aged between 18 and 64 years old is increasing significantly worldwide. Studies have reported that this group of young stroke survivors encounters enormous difficulties reintegrating into their social roles. Individualised discussions with healthcare professionals and learning from other survivors are imperative for them to reconstruct their identities after stroke.

Personal Growth Experience among Parents of Children with Autism Participating in Intervention.

Guided by Pals' (in: McStay (ed) Identity and story: Creating self in narrative, American Psychological Association, Washington DC, 2006) model of self-making through a narrative lens in the context of adversity, this study investigated not only the difficulties but also the personal growth that parents have experienced while participating in the interventions with their children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in mainland China. Based on interviews with 16 purposively sampled parents, thematic analysis revealed themes concerning the parents' acknowledgment of stressful events and their emotional reactions, meanings of their experiences constructed through causal connections, and outcomes of their perceived improvement in self-understanding, parent-child relationships, and philosophies on life. Largely consistent with this theoretical model, such findings highlight the uniqueness of the personal growth process of parents of children with ASD in China's sociocultural context.

Acupuncture and related therapies for treating irritable bowel syndrome: overview of systematic reviews and network meta-analysis.

Background: An overview of systematic reviews (SRs) and a network meta-analysis (NMA) were conducted to evaluate the comparative effectiveness of acupuncture and related therapies used either alone, or as an add-on to other irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) treatments.

Methods: A total of eight international and Chinese databases were searched for SRs of randomized controlled trials (RCTs). The methodological quality of SRs was appraised using the AMSTAR instrument.

Effect of acupuncture on heart rate variability: a systematic review.

Aim: To summarize all relevant trials and critically evaluate the effect of acupuncture on heart rate variability (HRV).

Method: This was a systematic review with meta-analysis. Keyword search was conducted in 7 databases for randomized controlled trials (RCTs).

Religious counseling in the penal context: strategies of trust and establishment of trusting relationships in a context of distrust.

The paper describes how distrust shapes the network of relationships between the different agents in the penal context, among inmates, between inmates and their family, between inmates and staff, between counselors and staff, and between inmates and counselors, and discusses how counseling strategies need to be adjusted to counter the effects of the institutional and biographical context of distrust. The paper is based on many years of participation and observation in the context of Hong Kong.

Aging in culture.

This article reviews the empirical studies that test socioemotional aging across cultures. The review focuses on comparisons between Western (mostly North Americans and Germans) and Eastern cultures (mostly Chinese) in areas including age-related personality, social relationships, and cognition. Based on the review, I argue that aging is a meaning-making process.

The moderating role of age in the relationship between volunteering motives and well-being.

Driven by socioemotional selectivity theory, this study examined whether age moderated the associations of volunteering motives with physical and psychological well-being in a sample of Hong Kong Chinese volunteers. Volunteering motives were measured by the volunteer functions inventory. Findings revealed that even after controlling for demographic characteristics and volunteering experience, age was related to higher social and value motives but lower career motives, and moderated the associations of social and protective motives with well-being.

Trans-local ties, local ties and psychological well-being among rural-to-urban migrants in Shanghai.

During the past three decades, an estimated 200 million rural residents have moved to urban centers in China. They are "sojourners" in the cities and maintain close ties with their home communities, which we term trans-local ties. This paper examines the relationship between migrants' social ties and their mental health, and contrasts the trans-local ties with migrants' ties in the receiving communities, which are termed local ties.

Age differences in the likelihood of destructive anger responses under different relationship contexts: a comparison of mainland and Hong Kong Chinese.

This brief report examined how the likelihood of destructive anger responses varied with age across relationship contexts. Seventy-six older adults and 100 younger adults from Hong Kong and Mainland China reported their responses to anger-eliciting scenarios elicited by a kin, a close or a casual friend. Results indicated that compared with their younger counterparts, older Hong Kong Chinese were less likely to report direct aggression toward kin, but older Mainland Chinese were more likely to do so.

Preliminary evidence regarding the hypothesis that the sex ratio at sexual maturity may affect longevity in men.

In human populations, variation in mate availability has been linked to various biological and social outcomes, but the possible effect of mate availability on health or survival has not been studied. Unbalanced sex ratios are a concern in many parts of the world, and their implications for the health and survival of the constituent individuals warrant careful investigation. We indexed mate availability with contextual sex ratios and investigated the hypothesis that the sex ratio at sexual maturity might be associated with long-term survival for men.

Interdependent self-construal moderates the age-related negativity reduction effect in memory and visual attention.

There is some debate concerning whether people selectively attend to and remember less negative relative to positive or neutral information with age. We argue that such an age-related negativity reduction effect may be attenuated among individuals who are more interdependent, as they are likely to perceive negative information as equally useful and important as positive information. In 2 studies, we tested this hypothesis by examining memory for (Study 1) and visual attention to (Study 2) emotional (positive vs.

Age differences in dispositional optimism: a cross-cultural study.

Testing the hypothesis that individuals develop their personal characteristics according to what their cultures emphasize, this cross-sectional study aimed at investigating how dispositional optimism varied with age among Americans and Hong Kong Chinese. The sample included 84 younger adults and 55 older adults that were equally distributed across the two cultures. Results revealed that older Americans displayed a higher level of dispositional optimism than did younger Americans; whereas older Chinese showed a lower level of dispositional optimism than did their younger counterparts.

Investigating the mechanism of marital mortality reduction: the transition to widowhood and quality of health care.

While it is well known that the widowed suffer increased mortality risks, the mechanism of this survival disadvantage is still under investigation. In this article, we examine the quality of health care as a possible link between widowhood and mortality using a unique data set of 475,313 elderly couples who were followed up for up to nine years. We address whether the transition to widowhood affects the quality of care that individuals receive and explore the extent to which these changes mediate the elevated mortality hazard for the widowed.

Benefits of negative social exchanges for emotional closeness.

Negative exchanges in social relationships have traditionally been studied as having negative consequences. This study explored whether they might have positive effects for relationship closeness. The sample included 351 adults, aged between 18 and 91 years, residing in Hong Kong, China.

Testing the psychometric properties of a Chinese version of the Level of Expressed Emotion scale.

Expressed emotion of families of people with schizophrenia is useful and important to evaluate the effects of family interventions. This study tested the reliability and validity of a Chinese version of the Level of Expressed Emotion scale. This psychometric analysis included tests of content validity and reliability, and an exploratory factor analysis.

Evaluation of a peer-led mutual support group for Chinese families of people with schizophrenia.

Family interventions in schizophrenia have shown positive effects on patients but little attention has been paid to their effects on family members, particularly those in non-Western countries. This randomized controlled trial evaluated the effectiveness of a bi-weekly, 12-session, family-led mutual support group for Chinese caregivers of schizophrenia sufferers over 6 months compared with standard psychiatric care. It was conducted with 76 families of outpatients with schizophrenia in Hong Kong of whom 38 were assigned randomly to either a mutual support group or standard care.

Cultural specificity of socioemotional selectivity: age differences in social network composition among Germans and Hong Kong Chinese.

We examined age differences in social network composition among 330 Germans and 330 Hong Kong Chinese, aged 20 to 91 years. We measured social network composition with the Social Convoy Questionnaire. In both cultures, older age was associated with the same number of close social partners and fewer peripheral social partners than was younger age.

A disease management program for families of persons in Hong Kong with dementia.

Objectives: This study tested the effectiveness of a dementia care management program for Chinese families of relatives with dementia on caregivers' and patients' health outcomes over a 12-month follow-up period.

Methods: The dementia care management program is an educational and supportive group for caregivers that lasts six months. A controlled trial was conducted with 88 primary caregivers of persons with dementia in two dementia care centers in Hong Kong.

Oral mucositis and quality of life of Hong Kong Chinese patients with cancer therapy.

Oral mucositis associated with cancer therapy often has devastating impact on patients' quality of life (QoL), affecting multiple spheres of daily and psychosocial functioning. This descriptive cross-sectional study aimed at describing the severity and distress of oral mucositis, as well as QoL of Hong Kong Chinese patients treated with cancer therapy, and identifying the extent to which oral mucositis correlated with QoL. A convenience sample of 38 in-patients and 50 out-patients with solid tumors and during the peak phase of oral mucositis was recruited.

A pilot study of chlorhexidine and benzydamine oral rinses for the prevention and treatment of irradiation mucositis in patients with head and neck cancer.

This pilot study was designed to compare the efficacy of 0.2% wt/vol chlorhexidine gluconate and 0.15% wt/vol benzydamine hydrochloride oral rinses in alleviating irradiation oropharyngeal mucositis for patients with head and neck cancer.