INTRODUCTION Health-related quality of life (HRQL) of chronic patients has been researched as the ultimate goal of modern treatment of chronic diseases to improve patients'quality of life. OBJECTIVE The objective was to assess the reliability of the Serbian version of the Sickness Impact Profile (SIP) questionnaire on the sample of patients with chronic viral hepatitis. METHODS The research covered 102 patients with chronic hepatitis (47 type B and 55 type C). The assessment of the reliability of the SIP questionnaire was performed by testing the internal consistency of the questions by calculating the Cronbach's alpha coefficient. The factor analysis was used to assess whether the grouping of the questions within dimensions matches the distribution of the questions in the original English version of the questionnaire administered to U.S. patient population. RESULTS The Cronbach's alpha coefficient for the entire questionnaire is 0.925, 0.869 for the physical dimension, and 0.857 for the psychosocial dimension. After running a factor analysis of the psychosocial dimension, "emotional instability" was extracted as the key factor, confirming the results of previous research. Compared with the English version of the questionnaire, the Cronbach's alpha coefficient of the Serbian version does not diverge significantly, whereas the factor analysis confirms the classification of the questionnaire into two dimensions. CONCLUSION Our study has shown that the Serbian version of the SIP questionnaire is a reliable tool for assessing the HRQL of patients with chronic hepatitis B and C before starting treatment.

INTRODUCTION The risk of metabolic abnormalities is greatly increased in schizophrenic patients started on an atypical antipsychotic medication. Patients with psychiatric disorders exceed mortality ranges resulting from, among others, increased risk of cardiovascular events. Other factors contributing to the development of metabolic syndrome include prolonged duration of illness, increasing age, female sex and lifestyle factors. OBJECTIVE This cross-sectional study was taken up to assess the prevalence of the metabolic syndrome (MetS) in schizophrenic patients receiving olanzapine monotherapy for at least six months and to determine the most important risk factors associated with metabolic syndrome presence in these patients. METHODS A total of 93 long term hospitalized schizophrenic patients (71 men, 22 women), had a screening of the following: case-history data, psychiatric scales, anthropometric measures, blood (fasting glucose, lipid status, C-reactive protein--CRP) and urine samples (microalbuminuria). RESULTS Prevalence of MetS according to International Diabetes Federation criteria in our study was 34.4%. The multivariate analysis distinguished the following significant predictors of MetS presence (in order of appearance): data about diabetes mellitus in family history (p = 0.002), body mass index > 25 kg/m2 (p = 0.002), hyperlipidemia in family history (p = 0.008), and elevated CRP value (p = 0.042). CONCLUSION High rate of MetS in patients treated with olanzapine in this study exceeds MetS prevalence in general population. Among observed parameters, our study pointed to several "high risk" predictors associated with MetS presence. Regular monitoring of cardiometabolic risk factors is highly recommended. Positive heredity distress mentioned above may direct a psychiatrist to prescribe some other drug than olanzapine in the long term treatment of schizophrenia.

Background . Self-regulation is an important executive function responsible for the control of emotions, behaviors and inner processes. It is related to the academic success of the children as well as to their cognitive and social development. Children with intellectual disability are reported to have significant deficits in self-regulation skills. Objective. The goal of this study was to examine self-regulation skills in children with mild intellectual disability. The addi­tional goals were to examine self-regulation in relation to the child’s gender and to examine the relationship between age and self-regulation. Method . The sample for this study com­prised 42 children with mild intellectual disability, aged 7 to 15. There were 22 boys and 20 girls. Self- regulation was assessed with the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function (BRIEF). Results . The results indicated that 10 children or 23.8% had clinically significant deficit in self-regulation skills. Self-regulation skills in this sample were significantly lower as com pared to the normative sample. Boys had better self-regulation skills than the girls in this sample. Self-regulation skills were impro­ving with age for this sample of participants. Conclusion . Given the fact that these skills can be improved, it is suggested that educa­tional institutions should give more attention to the development of executive functions at school age. Educational institu­tions should consider incorporating the training of executive functions into their curriculums.