There is a lack of information about alcohol use by transgender women. We estimated the prevalence of dangerous alcohol use in the last 12 months by transgender women, who are known as travestis in Brazil, and we identified the associated risk factors. Three hundred travestis were recruited using Respondent Driving Sampling (RDS). We applied the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT). We controlled the sample by applying a weight to each interviewee. Three quarters (74.2%) of travestis were regular drinkers, half (48.7%) scored over eight in the AUDIT and 14.8% scored over 20. The risk factors for alcohol use were: aged over 24, low income and unprotected sex. The dangerous use of alcohol is prevalent among travestis. Given that this group has a greater risk of HIV infection and transmission, and that the dangerous use of alcohol was associated with unsafe sex, specific intervention strategies are required.

M a i l i n d A d d r e s s : K a t a s h i O k o s h i• T r a v e s s a C y r o T a r g a , 1 1 5 -1 8 6 1 0 -2 5 0 -B o t u c a t u , S P -B r a z i l E-mail: okoshi@cardiol. OBJECTIVEThe purpose of this study was to identify echocardiographic parameters that allow distinguishing different levels of cardiac dysfunction in aortic banded rats. METHODSWistar male rats (90-100 g) were subjected to aortic banding (n=23) or a sham operation (n=12). The following echocardiographic parameters were evaluated and used to group rats into groups with similar characteristics using cluster analysis: absolute values and after normalization to body weight of left ventricular enddiastolic diameter (LVDD) and left atrial systolic diameter; left ventricular end-systolic diameter (LVSD); LV weight to body weight ratio (LVW/BW); three indexes of left ventricular shortening (endocardial fractional shortening, EFS; midwall FS, MFS; and posterior wall shortening velocity, (PWSV). RESULTSThe cluster analysis could group aortic banded rats into two groups: mild (n=13) and severe (n=9) stage of heart failure. There was no overlapping among the values of the 95% confi dence interval of the following parameters between the two groups: LVDD, LVSD, EFS, MFS, LVW/BW, and PWSV. CONCLUSIONIt is feasible to distinguish two groups of aortic banded rats according to the level of cardiac dysfunction using those echocardiographic parameters. This allows to perform longitudinal studies in homogeneous groups of rats with aortic banding and cardiac dysfunction.

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