Pregnancy Tests

The present study included 121 healthy volunteers aged 27.22 ± 10.61 years old, and 22 depressed patients aged 29.48 ± 9.28 years old.
This mixed population was chosen because of the nature of the instrument. The STAI principally measures anxiety as a feature of the general population, so the main study sample to test the properties of the instrument should be 'healthy normal subjects'. However it is also important to test the properties of the instrument in a population that manifests higher than normal levels of anxiety. Depressed patients were chosen on the basis that this patients population was easier for the researchers to recruit taking into consideration practical issues.
Patients were physically healthy with normal clinical and laboratory findings (Electroencephalogram, blood and biochemical testing, thyroid function, test for pregnancy, B12 and folic acid). They came from the inpatient and outpatient unit of the 3^rd Department of Psychiatry, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, General Hospital AHEPA, Thessaloniki, Greece. They were consecutive cases and were chosen because they fulfilled the above criteria.
The normal controls group was composed by members of the hospital staff, students and other volunteers. A clinical interview confirmed that they did not suffer from any mental disorder and their prior history was free from mental and thyroid disorder. They were free of any medication for at least two weeks and were physically healthy.
All patients and controls provided written informed consent before participating in the study.
Translation and back translation were made by two of the authors; one of whom did the translation and the other who did not know the original English text did the back translation. The final translation was fixed by consensus of all authors.
The Greek translation along with the translated manual of the test will be available from the same publisher of the English version of the test and manual.
Clinical diagnosis was reached with the Schedules for Clinical Assessment in Neuropsychiatry (SCAN) version 2.0 [9 (link),10 ] and the International Personality Disorders Examination (IPDE) [11 (link)-14 (link)]. Both were applied by one of the authors (KNF) who has official training in a World Health Organization Training and Reference Center. The IPDE did not contribute to the clinical diagnosis of anxiety and/or depression, but was used in the frame of a global and comprehensive assessment of the patients. The second examiner performed an unstructured interview. The Symptoms Rating Scale for Depression and Anxiety (SRSDA) which provides an Anxiety index and a Beck Depression Inventory-21 score and the Eysenk Personality Questionnaire (EPQ) were applied for cross-validation purposes.
In 20 of the patients the instrument was re-applied 1–2 days later

Research nurses collected data at 3-monthly study visits using interviewer-administered questionnaires. Data were collected on sociodemographic characteristics, sexual behavior, contraceptive use, pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and substance use. Volunteers who became pregnant were linked to antenatal care services and followed up for a pregnancy outcome.
Laboratory tests included pregnancy tests for beta-human chorionic gonadotrophin (β-hcg) hormone performed on urine samples using QuickVue (Quidel Corporation, San Diego, CA, United States) and HIV tests following the national testing algorithm, which involves a screening test (Alere Medical Co. Ltd., Chuba, Japan), the StatPak rapid confirmatory kit (Chembo Diagnostics System Inc., Medford, NY, United States), and SD Bioline as a tiebreaker (Standard Diagnostics, Inc., South Korea). STIs (Neisseria gonorrhoeae and Chlamydia trachomatis) were tested on endocervical swabs using the GeneXpert platform (Cepheid AB, Rontgenvagen 5, Soina, Sweden).