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Anemia, survival and health-related quality of life
anemic individuals (Online Supplementary Figure S3A). At a younger age the mean difference was relatively small, but after the age of 60 years this difference in mean HRQoL increased substantially. Because HRQoL scores are not normally distributed, we also studied the per- centage of individuals with a HRQoL score below a cut- off value. This analysis revealed that the percentage of individuals with a total score below the 25th percentile was significantly higher among the group of individuals over 60 years old (Online Supplementary Figure S3B). Older individuals had a significantly lower mean HRQoL in the subscales physical functioning, social functioning, physical role functioning, emotional role functioning, vitality, bodily pain and general health (Online
Supplementary Figure S4). Moreover, a significantly larger proportion of anemic subjects older than 70 years had a score below the cut-off value, indicating a poor score, in six of the eight subscales: physical functioning (40% ver- sus 25%), social functioning (42% versus 33%), physical role functioning (35% versus 23%), vitality (36% versus 27%), bodily pain (45% versus 32%) and general health (42% versus 32%). In subjects between 60-70 years old there was a difference in the subscales physical function- ing (36% versus 27%) and physical role functioning (29% versus 21%) (Figure 2). Between 18-60 years no signifi- cant differences were observed when comparing per- centages of individuals with a HRQoL score below the cut-off value. Finally, we used multivariate logistic
Figure 2. Percentages of individuals, divided according to age group, with scores below the sex- and age-specific cut-off values for the different subscales of the RAND-36 health survey. An asterisk indicates a significantly (P-value <0.01) larger percentage below the sex- and age-specific cut-off value in anemic individuals compared with non-anemic individuals. PF: physical functioning; SF: social functioning; RF: physical role functioning; RE: emotional role functioning; MH: mental health; VT: vitality; BP: bodily pain; GH: general health.
haematologica | 2019; 104(3)
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