Certain organ system involvement also predicts damage accrual, in particular renal and neuropsychiatric involvement. Corticosteroids, cyclophosphamide and azathioprine all show an association with damage accrual, while hydroxychloroquine appears to have a “”protective”" effect. Four studies, which examined prognosis, all demonstrated that damage is a predictor of future mortality.

Conclusions: Damage in SLE patients increases over time and predicts future mortality. Patients at risk of damage can be identified from demographics factors and the pattern

of clinical involvement. Disease activity, corticosteroids and immunosuppressive therapy are also associated with future damage but further studies are needed to separate the mechanisms of these associations from the problem selleck chemicals of residual confounding. (C) 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.”
“This study aims to evaluate and quantify the possible effect of psychological symptoms on healthy workers’ quality of life (QOL).

The workers were recruited from a factory in south Taiwan. We assessed their psychological

symptoms with a 5-item brief symptom rating scale (BSRS-5) and measured the QOL using the Taiwanese version of the World Health Organization Quality of Life (WHOQOL)-BREF. Multiple linear regression analysis was conducted to explore the association between the two tools after control Selleck JQ-EZ-05 of confounding by other predictors.

A total of 1,080 workers, who attended a physical examination, completed questionnaires and informed consent forms. Scores on the BSRS-5 significantly predicted scores in each domain and items of the WHOQOL-BREF. The magnitude of psychological domain score seemed to be affected the most; every 1 point increase in BSRS-5 was associated with a 0.39 raw score (equivalent to 2.44 percentile) decrease in QOL. The sleep facet of WHOQOL appeared to have the highest association, followed by items of

negative feelings, energy, and concentration.

The BSRS-5 score is predictive for scores of all four domains and 26 items of the Taiwanese version of the WHOQOL-BREF for regular factory workers.”
“Nitrogen S63845 chemical structure diffusion is investigated in single crystalline austenitic stainless steel AISI 316L during ion beam nitriding and subsequent annealing at three different crystalline orientations. After nitriding at 400 degrees C and ion energy of 1 keV, the N penetration depth depends significantly on the crystalline orientation, with the highest penetration depth for (001) orientation. The experimental observations are quantitatively reproduced by fitting using the model of diffusion under the influence of traps. During subsequent isothermal annealing, the N diffusion becomes significantly slower than during nitriding and independent of the orientation. Possible mechanisms of the anisotropic ion-enhanced N diffusion are discussed. c 2009 American Institute of Physics. [DOI:10.1063/1.