BACKGROUND Adults with heart failure (HF) experience a constellation of symptoms; however, understanding of gender differences in HF symptoms remain elusive. The aim of this study was to determine whether there are gender differences in physical and depressive symptoms and symptom patterns in HF using 2 different analytic techniques. METHODS We performed a secondary analysis of combined data from 6 studies of adults with HF. Physical symptoms were measured with the HF Somatic Perception Scale, and depressive symptoms were measured with the Patient Health Questionnaire-9. First, we performed propensity matching with the nearest neighbor to examine the average treatment effect for HF Somatic Perception Scale and Patient Health Questionnaire-9 in the matched sample of women and men. Next, we used the entire data set in a latent class mixture model to determine patterns of symptoms. Finally, we calculated predictors of class membership with multinomial logistic regression. RESULTS The sample (n = 524, 86.5% systolic HF) was 37% women with a mean age of 58.3 ± 13.9 years and mean number of years with HF of 6.9 ± 6.9. Three hundred sixty-six participants were matched on propensity scores; there were no significant gender differences in symptom scores between matched women (n = 183) and men (n = 183). Among all 524 participants, 4 distinct latent classes of symptom patterns indicate that many patients with HF are fatigued, some have more depressive symptoms, and others have significantly more edema or cough. Gender did not predict membership to any symptom pattern. CONCLUSIONS There were significant gender differences in sociodemographics, health behaviors, and clinical characteristics, but not HF symptoms or symptom patterns, using either analytic technique.

中文翻译：

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患有心力衰竭的女性和男性之间的身体和抑郁症状是否不同？：使用两种分析技术的探索。

背景 患有心力衰竭 (HF) 的成年人会出现一系列症状；然而，对心力衰竭症状的性别差异的理解仍然难以捉摸。本研究的目的是使用两种不同的分析技术来确定心力衰竭的身体症状和抑郁症状以及症状模式是否存在性别差异。方法 我们对 6 项成人心力衰竭研究的综合数据进行了二次分析。使用 HF 躯体感知量表测量身体症状，使用患者健康问卷 9 测量抑郁症状。首先，我们与最近邻进行倾向匹配，以检查匹配的女性和男性样本中 HF 躯体感知量表和患者健康问卷 9 的平均治疗效果。接下来，我们在潜在类混合模型中使用整个数据集来确定症状模式。最后，我们用多项逻辑回归计算了类别成员资格的预测因子。结果 样本（n = 524，86.5% 收缩期心力衰竭）包括 37% 的女性，平均年龄为 58.3 ± 13.9 岁，平均心力衰竭年数为 6.9 ± 6.9 年。三百六十六名参与者在倾向得分上进行了匹配；匹配的女性 (n = 183) 和男性 (n = 183) 之间的症状评分没有显着的性别差异。在所有 524 名参与者中，4 种不同的潜在症状模式表明许多心力衰竭患者感到疲劳，一些患者有更多的抑郁症状，而另一些患者则有明显更多的水肿或咳嗽。性别不能预测任何症状模式的隶属关系。结论 使用任一分析技术，社会人口统计学、健康行为和临床特征存在显着的性别差异，但心力衰竭症状或症状模式没有显着的性别差异。