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Influence of alexithymia on the management of Latin American patients with asthma: A cross-sectional study
OBJECTIVES: In asthmatic patients, studies suggest that alexithymia leads to negative consequences and emotions that can affect physical, psychological, and social aspects of life. We designed this study to determine the frequency of alexithymia in Latin American patients with asthma, as well as to...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
SAGE Publications
2020
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7278303/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32551114 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/2050312120930913 |
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author | Vanegas, Emanuel Felix, Miguel Ramon, German D López Jove, Orlando Matos Benavides, Edgar Emilio Tinoco-Morán, Iván Bernstein, Jonathan A Cherrez-Ojeda, Iván |
author_facet | Vanegas, Emanuel Felix, Miguel Ramon, German D López Jove, Orlando Matos Benavides, Edgar Emilio Tinoco-Morán, Iván Bernstein, Jonathan A Cherrez-Ojeda, Iván |
author_sort | Vanegas, Emanuel |
collection | PubMed |
description | OBJECTIVES: In asthmatic patients, studies suggest that alexithymia leads to negative consequences and emotions that can affect physical, psychological, and social aspects of life. We designed this study to determine the frequency of alexithymia in Latin American patients with asthma, as well as to understand how this personality trait and each of its components interact with asthma severity and demographic variables, and their implications on treatment adherence and disease control under such setting. METHODS: We conducted a cross-sectional study, involving 265 Latin American patients with asthma. Patient demographics and clinical characteristics were reported. The presence of alexithymia, asthma severity, and control, as well as treatment adherence, was analyzed. To assess the presence of alexithymia, the 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale was used. For the statistical analyses, we performed Kendall’s tau-b correlation coefficient, chi-square tests for association, and one-way analysis of variance. RESULTS: A total of 265 patients participated in the study with a gender distribution of 69.4% female and an average age of 54.7 years. In total, 30.2% of individuals presented alexithymia. There was a statistically significant correlation between educational level and 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale categories (p < .001), as well as a higher proportion of severe (35.1%, p = .001) and uncontrolled (50.0%, p = .185) asthma in patients with alexithymia. A higher proportion of patients with some level of non-adherence was seen on those with uncontrolled asthma (68.5%, p = .008). CONCLUSION: Our results suggest that in our sample, 3 in 10 Latin American asthma patients have alexithymia, and such mental condition is more common in those individuals with lower educational levels. Individuals with alexithymia present with severe asthma more frequently than do patients with possible or no alexithymia and are also more likely to have their disease uncontrolled. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7278303 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2020 |
publisher | SAGE Publications |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-72783032020-06-17 Influence of alexithymia on the management of Latin American patients with asthma: A cross-sectional study Vanegas, Emanuel Felix, Miguel Ramon, German D López Jove, Orlando Matos Benavides, Edgar Emilio Tinoco-Morán, Iván Bernstein, Jonathan A Cherrez-Ojeda, Iván SAGE Open Med Original Article OBJECTIVES: In asthmatic patients, studies suggest that alexithymia leads to negative consequences and emotions that can affect physical, psychological, and social aspects of life. We designed this study to determine the frequency of alexithymia in Latin American patients with asthma, as well as to understand how this personality trait and each of its components interact with asthma severity and demographic variables, and their implications on treatment adherence and disease control under such setting. METHODS: We conducted a cross-sectional study, involving 265 Latin American patients with asthma. Patient demographics and clinical characteristics were reported. The presence of alexithymia, asthma severity, and control, as well as treatment adherence, was analyzed. To assess the presence of alexithymia, the 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale was used. For the statistical analyses, we performed Kendall’s tau-b correlation coefficient, chi-square tests for association, and one-way analysis of variance. RESULTS: A total of 265 patients participated in the study with a gender distribution of 69.4% female and an average age of 54.7 years. In total, 30.2% of individuals presented alexithymia. There was a statistically significant correlation between educational level and 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale categories (p < .001), as well as a higher proportion of severe (35.1%, p = .001) and uncontrolled (50.0%, p = .185) asthma in patients with alexithymia. A higher proportion of patients with some level of non-adherence was seen on those with uncontrolled asthma (68.5%, p = .008). CONCLUSION: Our results suggest that in our sample, 3 in 10 Latin American asthma patients have alexithymia, and such mental condition is more common in those individuals with lower educational levels. Individuals with alexithymia present with severe asthma more frequently than do patients with possible or no alexithymia and are also more likely to have their disease uncontrolled. SAGE Publications 2020-06-07 /pmc/articles/PMC7278303/ /pubmed/32551114 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/2050312120930913 Text en © The Author(s) 2020 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). |
spellingShingle | Original Article Vanegas, Emanuel Felix, Miguel Ramon, German D López Jove, Orlando Matos Benavides, Edgar Emilio Tinoco-Morán, Iván Bernstein, Jonathan A Cherrez-Ojeda, Iván Influence of alexithymia on the management of Latin American patients with asthma: A cross-sectional study |
title | Influence of alexithymia on the management of Latin American patients with asthma: A cross-sectional study |
title_full | Influence of alexithymia on the management of Latin American patients with asthma: A cross-sectional study |
title_fullStr | Influence of alexithymia on the management of Latin American patients with asthma: A cross-sectional study |
title_full_unstemmed | Influence of alexithymia on the management of Latin American patients with asthma: A cross-sectional study |
title_short | Influence of alexithymia on the management of Latin American patients with asthma: A cross-sectional study |
title_sort | influence of alexithymia on the management of latin american patients with asthma: a cross-sectional study |
topic | Original Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7278303/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32551114 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/2050312120930913 |
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