Translation, cultural adaptation and validation of the revised patients' attitudes towards deprescribing (rPATD) questionnaire in Romanian older adults

BACKGROUND

Deprescribing is part of ensuring appropriate medication use and may reduce medication-related harm. Capturing the beliefs and attitudes of patients towards deprescribing by using a validated tool may support optimizing medication use in practice.

OBJECTIVES

To translate, culturally adapt and validate the revised Patients' Attitudes Towards Deprescribing (rPATD) questionnaire in Romanian and to investigate the attitudes and beliefs of older adults towards deprescribing.

METHODS

The rPATD questionnaire was translated using forward-backward translation into Romanian and culturally adapted. The psychometric properties were evaluated in older adults ≥65 years of age. Structural validity was assessed by item load on factors using an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) which was compared to the original English version and the internal consistency by Cronbach's alpha. Construct validity was evaluated by calculating the Spearman's rank correlation coefficients between the factor scores obtained using the revised version of the Romanian rPATD and scores on the Beliefs about Medicines Questionnaire (BMQ) Specific Concerns Romanian version. Floor and ceiling effect were also examined.

RESULTS

We translated the questionnaire and administered it to 224 participants (median age 72 years [interquartile range: 68.0; 77.0]). In the EFA individual items loaded onto 4 factors, grouped similarly to the English version (Involvement, Burden, Appropriateness, Concerns about Stopping factors). Two items from each of the Involvement and Appropriateness factors were removed to improve factor loading and avoid cross-loading. The Cronbach's alpha values for the 4 factors ranged between 0.522 and 0.773. The scores for Burden and Concerns about Stopping factors were found to be positively correlated with BMQ Specific Concerns score. We identified a ceiling effect for one of the four factors (Involvement) and no floor effects.

CONCLUSIONS

The Romanian rPATD was validated in 4 factor structure similar to the original English questionnaire. The Romanian version of the questionnaire may support the health care professionals in Romania to initiate and support patient-centered deprescribing.

Influences of Dispersions' Shapes and Processing in Magnetic Field on Thermal Conductibility of PDMS-Fe3O4 Composites

Composites of magnetite (Fe3O4) nanoparticles dispersed in a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) matrix were prepared by a molding process. Two types of samples were obtained by free polymerization with randomly dispersed particles and by polymerization in an applied magnetic field. The magnetite nanoparticles were obtained from magnetic micrograins of acicular goethite (α-FeOOH) and spherical hematite (α-Fe2O3), as demonstrated by XRD measurements. The evaluation of morphological and compositional properties of the PDMS:Fe3O4 composites, performed by SEM and EDX, showed that the magnetic particles were uniformly distributed in the polymer matrix. Addition of magnetic dispersions promotes an increase of thermal conductivity compared with pristine PDMS, while further orienting the powders in a magnetic field during the polymerization process induces a decrease of the thermal conductivity compared with the un-oriented samples. The shape of the magnetic dispersions is an important factor, acicular dispersions providing a higher value for thermal conductivity compared with classic commercial powders with almost spherical shapes.

Immobilized Antibodies on Mercaptophenylboronic Acid Monolayers for Dual-Strategy Detection of 20S Proteasome

A dual strategy for the electrochemical detection for 20S proteasome (20S) is proposed, based on the oriented immobilization of a capture monoclonal antibody (Abβ) on a self-assembled monolayer of 4-mercaptophenylboronic acid (4-MPBA) on gold electrodes, which led to the Au/4-MPBA/Abβ immunosensor. The methodology comprises the correlation of 20S concentration with (i) its proteolytic activity toward the Z-LLE-AMC substrate, using the Au/4-MPBA/Abβ/20S, and (ii) the enzymatic activity of an alkaline phosphatase (AlkP) from the AlkP-labeled secondary antibody (Abcore-AlkP), which involves the conversion of aminophenylphosphate to the electroactive aminophenol using Au/4-MPBA/Abβ/20S/Abcore-AlkP. The step-by-step construction of the immunosensor and the interactions at its surface were evaluated by surface plasmon resonance and gravimetric analysis with quartz crystal microbalance, showing a high affinity between both antibodies and 20S. Morphological analysis by scanning electron microscopy demonstrated a pattern of parallel lines upon immobilization of Abβ on 4-MPBA and morphological changes to a well-organized granular structure upon binding of 20S. A voltametric and impedimetric characterization was performed after each step in the immunosensor construction. The two detection strategies were evaluated. It was shown that the immunosensor responds linearly with 20S concentration in the range between 5 and 100 µg mL-1, which corresponds to proteasome levels in serum in the case of diverse pathological situations, and LoD values of 1.4 and 0.2 µg mL-1 were calculated for the detection strategies. The immunosensor was applied to the detection of 20S in serum samples with recovery values ranging from 101 to 103%.