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Aims The aim of this study is to investigate the long-term relationship between revascularization technique and health status in diabetics with multivessel disease. Methods and results Using the Alberta Provincial Project for Outcomes Assessment in Coronary Heart Disease (APPROACH) registry, we captured 1319 diabetics with multivessel disease requiring revascularization for an acute coronary syndrome (January 2009–December 2012) and reported health status using the Seattle Angina Questionnaire (SAQ) at baseline, 1, 3 and 5-years [599 underwent coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG); 720 underwent percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI)]. Adjusted analyses were performed using a propensity score-matching technique. After adjustment (including baseline SAQ domain scores), 1-year mean (95% CI) SAQ scores (range 0–100 with higher scores reflecting improved health status) were significantly greater in selected domains for CABG compared to PCI (exertional capacity: 81.7 [79.5–84.0] vs. 78.8 [76.5–81.0], P = 0.07; angina stability: 83.1 [80.4–85.9] vs. 75.0 [72.3–77.8], P Conclusion Improvements in health status with CABG compared with PCI were not sustained long-term. This temporal sequence should be considered when contemplating a revascularization strategy in diabetics with multivessel disease.

While it has been identified that gender (socially manufactured roles, behaviors, expressions, and identities) plays a central role in men's and women's health, the distinction between gender and sex (biological attributes) has largely been ignored in health science research. The purpose of this study was to look at the unique contributions of sex, age, and the Gender Index (GI) to baseline health status in a cohort of patients with coronary artery disease (CAD).Questions that comprised the GI were included in the follow-up questionnaire sent to patients in the APPROACH registry. To examine the relationship between sex, gender, and health status, a sequential linear regression modeling approach was used.A total of 632 patients completed the GI between July and August 2015. The women were significantly older (68 years vs. 66 years, p = 0.02) and significantly more likely to have hypertension (50.8% vs. 38.8%, p = 0.02) compared to the men. Women reported significantly lower mean Seattle Angina Questionnaire (SAQ) scores compared to men. The inclusion of age into the models did not change the relationship between sex and the SAQ scales. However, the inclusion of the GI attenuated the relationship between sex and the SAQ scale scores.Our results support the concept that sex differences in health status outcomes may be better explained by patient's gender-related characteristics, than biological sex characteristics. More importantly, the GI offers a pragmatic composite score to assess the effects of psychosocial factors that researchers interested in measuring gender could use in studies of subjects with CAD.

Background: While it has been identified that gender (socially manufactured roles, behaviours, expressions and identities) plays a central role in men’s and women’s health, the distinction between gender and sex (biological attributes) has largely been ignored in health sciences research. One aspect of the GENESIS-PRAXY study was the development of a ‘gender index’ which measures gender and offers a pragmatic means to explore the relationship between sex, gender and health outcomes. The purpose of this study was to look at the unique contributions of sex, age and the GENESIS Gender Index (GGI) to baseline Seattle Angina Questionnaire (SAQ) dimensional scores in a cohort of patients undergoing cardiac catheterization for CAD. Methods: Questions that comprised the GGI were included in the follow-up questionnaire sent to patients in the APPROACH registry. For the purposes of these analyses, SAQ scores were dichotomized whereby respondents were given a score of 1 if they scored 100 (best possible score) on the SAQ scales, and 0 if less than 100. Logistic regression models were created including each of the SAQ dimensional scores as the dependent variables and sex, age and the GGI as the independent variables entered in unique blocks. The area under the curve (AUC) and resulting c statistics were calculated for each block. Results: GGI scores and baseline SAQ scores were calculated for 532 returned questionnaires sent between July 1st and August 31 st 2015 within one week of index catheterization. Men were more likely to report perfect SAQ dimensional scores compared to women and these relationships were significant in the Physical Limitation and Treatment Satisfaction scales (odds ratios 2.75 and 1.56 respectively). The inclusion of age into the models did not change the relationship between sex and the SAQ scales. However the inclusion of the GGI attenuated the relationship between sex and the SAQ scales whereby sex was no longer statistically independently predictive of SAQ scale scores. Furthermore c statistics indicated that including the GGI increased the discrimination of the models in all SAQ dimensional scales. Conclusions: This analyses adds to the literature that specifies that gender is a distinct constructs that can be measured by the GGI. More importantly, the increased predictive accuracy of the models that included the GGI suggests that the psychosocial variables included in the GGI provide more information in understanding the differences in outcomes between men and women undergoing catheterization for CAD.

Abstract. Sleep loss is known to severely disturb individuals’ mood and emotion processing. Here, we tested the hypothesis that quality of sleep is predictive of individuals’ performance on a task evaluating emotional empathy. We tested 34 healthy undergraduate students [19 males, mean (SD) age = 21.82 (3.26) years; mean (SD) education = 14.98 (1.91) years] recruited through the University of Calgary research participation system. We collected objective (actigraphy) and subjective (questionnaires and self-reports) sleep measures to characterize individuals’ sleep quality, and asked participants to solve a computerized emotional empathy task. We first performed a dimensionality reduction analysis on the sleep-related measures, which resulted in six principal components, and then ran a stepwise multiple regression analysis to investigate the sleep measures that best predicted participants’ scores on the emotional empathy task. We found that subjective sleep quality, together with sleep phase, best predicted participants’ empathic sensitivity to negative images while they explicitly evaluated the emotions of others (i.e., direct component of emotional empathy). Also, subjective sleep quality resulted to be the best predictor of participants’ arousal state in response to negative images, which is an implicit manifestation of their empathic experience (i.e., indirect component of emotional empathy). In both cases, lower subjective sleep quality was associated with lower empathic sensitivity to negative stimuli. Finally, sleep duration best predicted average empathic responses to stimuli of all valences, with shorter sleep durations associated with lower average empathic responses. Our findings provide evidence of a significant relationship between individuals’ quality of sleep and their ability to share the emotions experienced by others. These findings may have important implications for individuals employed in professions requiring social interaction and empathic experience coupled with schedules that interfere with nighttime sleep.