Majoni Melissa, Oremus Mark
Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Western University, 1151 Richmond Street, London, ON, Canada.
School of Public Health and Health Systems, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo, ON, Canada.
BMC Res Notes. 2017 Dec 21;10(1):766. doi: 10.1186/s13104-017-3099-2.
We examined whether caregivers' employment status (i.e., retired or employed) might modify the association between the behaviours of persons with Alzheimer's disease (PwAD) and caregivers' health-related quality-of-life (HRQoL). Data came from a cross-sectional study of the primary informal caregivers of 200 persons with mild or moderate Alzheimer's disease. Caregivers completed the EQ-5D-3L to rate their HRQoL and generate health utility scores, and the Dementia Behaviour Disturbance Scale (DBDS) to assess the degree to which PwAD exhibited each of 28 behaviours. Caregivers' health utility scores were regressed on overall DBDS scores, with caregiver employment status (retired, employed) treated as an effect modifier and confounder in separate regression models. We also controlled for age, sex, income, education, caregivers' relationship to the PwAD, and whether caregivers gave up paid employment/cut down working hours to care for PwAD.
Effect modification by caregiver employment status is possible, with the inverse association between DBDS score and health utility score largely existing for retired versus employed caregivers. Research using larger samples and longitudinal data would further inform this area of inquiry.
我们研究了照料者的就业状况（即退休或在职）是否可能改变阿尔茨海默病患者（PwAD）的行为与照料者健康相关生活质量（HRQoL）之间的关联。数据来自一项针对200名轻度或中度阿尔茨海默病患者的主要非正式照料者的横断面研究。照料者完成了EQ-5D-3L以评估他们的HRQoL并生成健康效用分数，以及痴呆行为障碍量表（DBDS）以评估PwAD表现出28种行为中每种行为的程度。在单独的回归模型中，将照料者的健康效用分数对DBDS总分进行回归分析，将照料者就业状况（退休、在职）视为效应修饰因素和混杂因素。我们还控制了年龄、性别、收入、教育程度、照料者与PwAD的关系，以及照料者是否放弃有偿工作/减少工作时间以照顾PwAD。
照料者就业状况可能存在效应修饰作用，退休照料者与在职照料者相比，DBDS分数与健康效用分数之间的负相关关系基本存在。使用更大样本和纵向数据的研究将进一步为该研究领域提供信息。
