Reasons for the lack of association between changes in health behavior and improved health status: an exploratory study

Persons with arthritis who attended a 12-hour self-management course generally showed improved health behaviors and improved health status. However, no association was found between the two. We therefore interviewed 54 course participants to determine factors that were associated with positive and negative health-status outcomes. Persons having positive outcomes indicated that they had more control over their disease and had a positive emotional status. Persons with negative outcomes indicated a lack of control and generally had a negative emotional status. These differences were statistically significant.

Titrimetric Determination of Calcium in Mechanically Separated Poultry and Beef: Collaborative Study

A collaborative study was conducted on a titrimetric EDTA method for the determination of calcium in mechanically separated poultry and beef tissue. Six laboratories analyzed, as blind duplicates, 5 poultry samples and 5 beef samples. Calcium concentrations covered the levels from 0.04 to 0.82%. Pooled standard deviations were 0.0165 for repeatability, 0.0072 for bias, and 0.0225 for reproducibility. The method has been adopted official first action.

Memory complaint and performance in normal and depressed older adults

The present study investigated the influence of depression on memory complaints and performance in a sample of community dwelling older adults (N = 41). Complaints were significantly more frequent in the clinically depressed subsample. However, their actual performance on tests of immediate and delayed recall did not differ significantly from the performance of nondepressed older adults. In addition, results indicated that depressives who responded favorably to a program of psychotherapy demonstrated significant reductions in levels of memory complaints at post-treatment assessment. Implications of these data for further research are discussed.