The current study explored the relationship of coping to both psychological and health parameters in 50 gay men recently (within three months) diagnosed with AIDS. Three methods of coping (active behavioral, active cognitive, and avoidance) and eight different coping strategies (positive involvement, expressive/ information seeking, reliance on others, positive understanding/create meaning, passive/ruminative, distraction, passive resignation, and solitary/passive behaviors) were assessed. Findings indicate that avoidance coping is not protecting these people from distressful feelings, mood disturbance, and concerns. The three coping methods evidenced distinctly different associations with measures of psychological and health variables. Active‐behavioral coping was related to lower total mood disturbance and higher self‐esteem, while avoidance coping was inversely related to self‐esteem and positively correlated with depression. The frequencies of specific coping strategies indicate men in this study were using cognitive strategies most frequently. Suggestions for interventions to help people cope with AIDS are given.

Twenty-four patients with chronic renal failure, stabilized on hemodialysis, were treated with recombinant human erythropoietin. Before treatment, all patients were anemic (mean Hct = 23.7%). Hematocrits reached normal levels (36.5%) after three months of treatment. Brain event-related potentials and neuropsychological tests were used to assess changes in brain and cognitive functions associated with the correction of anemia. Assessments were done prior to and after three and twelve months of rHuEPO treatment. The P3 component of the event-related potential increased in amplitude significantly with treatment, while its latency was unaffected. Of the four neuropsychological tests administered, scores on two improved significantly with treatment, and the other two approached significance. Taken together, these findings suggest that the correction of anemia to hematocrits near normal in uremic patients by rHuEPO treatment improves brain and cognitive function by raising levels of sustained attention, thus increasing speed and efficiency of scanning and perceptual-motor functions and enhancing learning and memory. These findings also suggest that anemia, either directly or indirectly, may impair brain function.

This paper reviews the current knowledge concerning treatment compliance in patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD). Adult hemodialysis patient noncompliance with the treatment regimen is very common. Objective and subjective measures of compliance, however, are often weakly correlated. In addition, the patients may be compliant with some aspects of the treatment regimen, but noncompliant with others. Unfortunately, no current model of predicting the degree of hemodialysis patient compliance is very accurate. In spite of this, behavioral approaches to increase regimen compliance do have at least short-term efficacy. There is a paucity of published data on compliance in adult peritoneal dialysis patients and an almost complete absence of systematic studies of compliance in children and adolescent dialysis patients. A multidimensional nosology of compliance behavior in ESRD patients is, therefore, proposed, as well as an approach to the diagnosis of noncompliance in ESRD patients and to possible interventions.

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